


Artificial Vitality

by Rho_Jaihtlyn



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bill has secrets, Character Death, Dipper might be depressed, Ford runs a biomedical research facility, Ill Dipper, Illness, M/M, Masochism, Original au, Prosthetics, Shockwave AU, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, What am I doing, car crash, prototypes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-09-24 23:04:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9791126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rho_Jaihtlyn/pseuds/Rho_Jaihtlyn
Summary: After months of hospital jumping, Dipper's Great Uncle Ford offers him an opportunity that might eventually allow him to live a full and normal life. While Mabel goes to college, Dipper moves into Vital Technologies' residence hall, relearning his body's strengths and abilities and coping with a new roommate that Ford had told him knew how to take care of him in worst-case scenarios (and the reoccurring instances in which Dipper wouldn't follow his instructed procedures).  Dipper wondered what the obnoxious blonde's qualifications were, and how he had managed to get stuck with him.He definitely wasn't good for his heart.





	1. New places, New Faces, Old Situations

The facility was much larger than Dipper had expected. It had only been open for a year and a half  - maybe two; Dipper’s perception of time wasn’t exactly up to par. He waited, sitting on a simple bench just outside of the large cafeteria. The floor and walls were bland, the tables and chairs only claiming greys and varying shades of blues. The whole building held the same scheme. It was clean, pristine, and smelled heavily of antiseptic and bleach. 

If he didn’t know better, he would have assumed it was a hospital.

But, he did know better, and he knew that this ward - this entire building of the facility - was the residence hall. Voices echoed off the walls of the cafeteria, quiet whispers that differed greatly from the usual roar of high school students at lunch. It was a sound he was beginning to miss.

He pushed his coffee-colored trunk under the bench, moving it out of the way for the staff and residence passing through. His eyes flitted from person to person, studying faces and limbs and occasionally wondering why someone was there, wondering if maybe they were there for the same reason he was. Shoes clicked against the tiled floor, murmurs bounced off of walls, all over a mechanical whirring sitting innocently underneath the noise. The teen crossed his ankles and pushed his feet under the bench with his suitcase, twiddling his fingers in anticipation. 

His doctor had told him he would meet him in this spot at noon. Dipper had arrived early, rushing “goodbye”s and hugs from his parents and sister, assuming the man would be eager to move things along and get him settled before his busy schedule blew up on him. Again. Running this entire facility, from medical procedures in the wing on the other side of the grounds to mechanical engineering in the building set on the edge of the property to everything else PLUS any problems that arose was probably a twenty-four-seven job, and he wasn’t surprised to see dark bags under his brown eyes and a coffee thermos gripped tightly in his left six-fingered hand when he finally approached him. 

With a quiet greeting, he stood and gave him an awkward hug before pulling his trunk up to his hip and urging the man to move on.  

“It’s good to see you, Dipper.” His graying hair was unkempt, black-rimmed glasses framing his hollowed cheeks, and the shadowed beginnings of stubble lined his jaw. Dipper didn’t fail to notice how he ardently avoided eye contact.

He shifted his case from one hand to the other, giving a grunt with the effort it took. It held all of his valuables, and a few pieces of clothing Mabel had knitted for him that he refused to leave behind, despite being informed that he would receive a new wardrobe upon moving in. It definitely wasn’t the lightest thing in the world. Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper saw his physician turn to him, eyeing his face and then the suitcase in his hand before promptly ripping the luggage from him and turning back to face the blue-tinted staircase ahead of them. “You know you shouldn’t be lifting things. I thought I had made myself clear before I discharged you. Do we need to go over the rules again?”

It was strange, how a member of his family could speak to him without any sense of emotional connection, how he just stared ahead of him with hard eyes and a deep frown. When Dipper and his sister were thirteen, the two males got along well. Dipper idolized Ford, followed him around his house when they visited, and was always eager to learn of his newest biological breakthrough. It may have been work for his uncle, but it was bonding time for Dipper, and it was in those times that he remembered his bright smile and warm laugh that, back then, wasn’t so rare. 

He didn’t understand much of his work then, but he still enjoyed the idea of being a part of something life-changing like his Uncle Ford’s and his partner’s research. It brought the kid so much joy that once, his uncle even let him sign his name at the bottom of one of his articles. That one never got published.

“No, Uncle Ford.” The younger brunette crossed his free arms over his chest. “I remembered the first eighty times you told me.”

Ford’s jaw clenched. “It would do you well to respect the people keeping you alive.” He turned right, down a dimly lit blue hallway, white doors lined with gray trim rising in room number with each one they passed. There was a long pause of awkward silence, Dipper rubbing his arm, studying the changing numbers on the plates nailed next to the doors. He jumped when his uncle’s voice filled the empty hall. “Recite them.”

“What?”

A sigh escaped Ford’s lips as he brought his free hand up to rub his eyes under his glasses. “The rules, Dipper. What are the rules?”

Dipper swallowed, eyes moving to gaze at the blue carpet beneath their feet. He hadn’t noticed the flooring changed. It must have been designed to keep the hallway quiet. Not that anyone would be up at night to disturb the residents sleeping. There was a curfew, after all.

His voice was monotone when he spoke, like he were reading lines right off of a page in which the words had no correlation to one another, counting each on a finger. “No physical exertion, including but not limited to running, excessive walking, lifting of heavy materials, or exercise not monitored by you or another physician. No stress-inducing activities; no reading texts or watching videos that could invoke empathetic or sympathetic reactions, leading to the release of adrenaline and elevated pulse. No eating foods high in cholesterol or sugar; avoid all possible sources of injury; keep the pulse tracker on at all times; and last but not least, no going anywhere alone.” 

His uncle nodded, stopping in front of a uniform door about three-fourths of the way down the hall and producing a metal key from his coat pocket. “Good. You remember well.” He turned to face Dipper, looking down on the adult teen with a scowl before he continued. “Now, why is it that you can’t follow them?” 

The 19 year old visibly flinched. “I-I’m - I apologize, Uncle Ford. I promise to be conscious of my future decisions.” 

They said nothing as Ford unlocked the room and set Dipper’s trunk on the mattress of the bed at the far side. The other looked to be inhabited, and Dipper mentally sighed as he realized he would be sharing a room. He was sick of sharing rooms. Especially with other sick people.

“Your roommate seems to be out for lunch with the rest of the floor.” Dipper did a 360 scan of the small apartment as he spoke, “he should be back within the next few minutes, but,” he grunted as he stood up from the floor after checking for something under Dipper’s bed, and glanced at the watch on his wrist, “right now I have somewhere to be.” He began moving towards the door, and Dipper briefly wondered if he was actually going to break one of his own rules and leave him alone. “Get settled. Make yourself comfortable. And _follow the rules,_ Dipper.” Of course he would. He wasn’t the same man Dipper had known seven years ago. That was Ford _before_ his research was discovered, Ford before the facility, Ford before he started spending every waking hour - and he was awake _every hour_ \- working strenuously, managing and trying to make things right.

That was Ford before Dipper got sick.

Dipper nodded, and Ford turned to leave. “Oh,” he muttered, patting his coat down and fishing in his inside pocket before handing Dipper a crumpled piece of paper addressed to “R.B. Cipher”. “Give this to your roommate.” He nodded again. “And don’t let him push you around.” Another nod. With a deep breath, Ford turned and left without a goodbye, gently shutting the door behind him.

Dipper collapsed into his mattress, groaning and rubbing his hands over his face. His life had taken a sharp turn too quickly, and it was all just now catching up to him. Here he was, patiently waiting for his roommate - whom he had yet to meet - to come back from lunch just so he could begin unpacking the items he had acquired from living in the hospital beforehand. He was doomed to live an eventless and controlled life now that his surgery was over, and included depending on others to do all his heavy lifting. He was _nineteen years old, damnit_ , he shouldn’t be dependent on other people. He had been stuck on bed rest for months, always sleeping or eating or going through short bursts of physical therapy to try to strengthen his heart that left him exhausted, but now he was free, and he wanted to move. He hated being incapable. He was sick of being ill. 

He never finished high school. He had had to watch Mabel’s graduation online from the hospital, had to watch her stand next to some kid that _wasn’t him_ , had to watch the principal hand her her diploma and walk across the stage alone with a forced smile on her face. He had to act like he was happy for her when she visited him, had to hide the tear stains on his face and the jealousy burning in the eyes his twin shared. 

Mabel was in college now. And Dipper was stuck here, stuck as a lab rat for Vital Tech. without any hope for a promising future. Mabel was living a dream Dipper had fantasized about his entire life, and he still had to be _happy_ for her. He was still learning how to congratulate her, learning how to accept her success and hope there was enough for both of their lives. He was still learning how to cope.

The room he was staying in was completely silent. There was one window, covered with navy blue blinds, but nothing made a sound outside. No birds chirping, no rain clouds thundering, not even the whistle of the wind or the tapping of tree branches on his window. It was eery. Discomforting. He hoped having someone else in the room would help, and briefly wondered how long his roommate had been staying here alone. His ears started ringing, grasping for even the slightest twitch of noise to hone in on, trying to create some type of sound that wasn’t there. 

The bed sheets rustled as he turned over onto his stomach, flipping his suitcase open and gently pulling out a small, black framed picture. He sat criss crossed near the head of the bed, rubbing his thumb over the two people in the photo fondly before setting it neatly on the nightstand. The rest of it would have to wait, but at least with Mabel watching over him - in the photo - he felt a little more comfortable. It was already a little more like home.

Dipper had just gotten comfortable when the door swung open, a tall blond stepping over the threshold and practically slamming the door behind him, mumbling angrily to himself. He was half-way through slipping his shoes off at the end of his own bed before he even noticed Dipper. His eyes narrowed at the brunette sitting cross legged in the center of the other bed. “What are you doing in here?” The other blinked, clearly surprised at his harsh tone. He finished taking his shoes off and pushed them under the edge of his bed with his toes, turning to the opposite side of the room and crossing his arms.

“I, uh,” Dipper cleared his throat, standing and taking a step across the room with his hand out-stretched in greeting, “I’m-”

“Stop.” His assumed roommate cut him off, holding a hand out in front of his face. “I don’t want names, kid. I asked you what you were doing in here.” Dipper swallowed hard, taking a step back and retracting his hand back to his side. 

He nodded once. “Okay, not friendly, got it.” The blond scoffed, but waited for him to continue. “This is my room too now. I’m your roommate, I guess.” 

His roommate groaned and fell back into his bed. “This is _just_ what I need! Another charity case. Another ploy to get me to open up. I told them not to do this, I _told them_.” He propped himself up on his elbows to look at Dipper, who couldn’t stop staring at the metal replacing his right arm. He hadn’t noticed it at first, being much more concerned with the stranger that had walked into his - their - room, but now he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. Beautifully constructed metal and wire that met skin just below his elbow. It was Vital Technology at its finest, and it had him wondering how much the arm could really do. He couldn’t help but feel jealous; at least his roommate looked like he belonged here, in an odd sort of way. His prosthetic was there for anyone to see, and he didn’t seem to have any shame in it, while Dipper was sure he would be mistaken for staff rather than a patient on multiple occasions. You couldn't see his tech.

His roommate cast him a sharp glare from his bed before he continued. “I bet you’re another counselor, someone they special ordered so I wouldn’t be suspicious.” Dipper didn’t like the way he talked like he was an object that could have been bought, but he didn’t interrupt. “You work for them, don’t you? Well, newsflash, kid, I don’t need any help.” He stood, pushing himself from the bed with his mechanical arm, and stepped right into Dipper’s personal space. “Now grab that suitcase and scram” he growled.

Dipper being mistaken for staff: 1

Dipper leaned back from the man, holding his hands up in defense. “Woah, man, hold on. I have no idea what you’re on about. I’m just a patient here, like you.” 

A hysteric laugh echoed off the walls of their small space. “You’ve got to be kidding me! They told you what this place was, right? If you’re _really_ a ‘patient’ here,” he drew air quotes with his fingers at the word ‘patient’, “then where’s your gear? Hmm?” Dipper raised an eyebrow.  _His gear?_

The man in front of him flexed the fingers on his mech, stretching his arm out towards him to draw his attention to it. _Oh._

He shook his head, eyes narrowing. “That’s not a question you just throw out to the world, Cipher.” The addressed gave him an accusatory look that told Dipper his assumption of his identity was correct. Okay, so at least he knew he wasn't an imposter. 

“How do you know my-” Dipper stepped back towards his bed and picked up the crumpled and folded envelope setting on his nightstand and held it out to his roommate. The blonde sent a cold glare at the slightly shorter male before ripping the paper from him and reading the name printed neatly on the front: “R.B. Cipher”. He scowled and tore the top of the envelope off, pulling the letter out and dropping its container to the floor. Dipper watched silently, arms crossed and eyes angry as the other read over the words Ford had left for him. The emotion on his face twisted, softened, golden honey eyes chancing a glance at him at one point in his read, holding a surprised and sympathetic expression. Dipper wondered what was written in the letter.

When he was done, he folded the letter, picked up the envelope from the floor, and set both gently in the drawer of his nightstand, silent as Dipper followed his movements with his eyes. He really wanted to know what was written in the letter. They both stood in the center of the room, quiet until his roommate took a deep breath and made eye contact with him, a smirk stretching his lips that Dipper immediately knew he would see often. “The name’s Bill Cipher.” 

He held his hand out, and Dipper confidently shook it. “Dipper Pines.”

“Welcome to Vital Technologies, kid. Now, let’s get you settled in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are appreciated, and constructive criticism is encouraged! Thank you for reading!


	2. New Secrets, New Nicknames, and Hunger That Starves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper's first day with his roommate shows his care taking nature when Dipper fails to follow the rules. Again.

Dipper jerked awake, a pillow that wasn’t his falling off of his face to the carpeted floor. He blinked, gathering his bearings; it was always difficult to get used to waking up in a new room. He’d been to plenty of hospitals, and it was always the same.

But this wasn’t a hospital.

Hazel eyes found his new roommate (technically, Dipper was the new roommate; he was the one who moved into Bill’s room. Bill had lived here longer than him. He didn’t have the right to call Bill the “new roommate”, but I digress.), his long legs carrying him silently across the room and into a small set off area  at the end of Dipper’s bed. They had spent a good two hours unpacking Dipper’s suitcase and organizing his side of the room exactly the way he wanted it the day before. They kept the talking to a minimum; in fact, Dipper wasn’t sure they had spoken at all, save for short questions about where he wanted this to go, or how he wanted that to be done. He’d spent the night in a room with a complete stranger.

Bill pulled open the small cabinet above the counter, grabbing a grey bottle of unlabeled pills (Ford had told him they were necessary to keep him healthy, but the drug hadn’t been approved, so he needed to keep it on the down-low) and tossing them at Dipper, successfully hitting his roommates clavicle. “Take your medicine and get dressed, kid, I’m starving.” 

Dipper stared at him, his hands rolling the bottle around in his hands as he processed the events, the hard pills rattling around like beads in a maraca. He squinted. “Did you throw a pillow at my face?”

He watched his roommate glide back over to his dresser. “Yes, yes I did.” He pulled a pair of grey jeans and a sapphire blue T-shirt from the drawers. Dipper didn’t think it fit his personality. “Now hightail it out of there, Pines, I want breakfast.” He groaned, picking up Bill’s pillow that had woken him and covering his face with it.

“Five more minutes.”

“Dipper Pines, I swear I will drag you down the hall in your boxers if you don’t get out of that bed.”

If someone were watching them, they’d never guess the two males had just met - forcibly, even - the day before. Dipper had never gotten along well with strangers, but this man seemed relatively easy to be around. Then again, he had known him _less than one day_ , and they had rarely spoken.

In slow, lethargic movements, Dipper slid out of his bed and onto the floor with his blanket still wrapped around him. He didn’t have to look at Bill to see the glare fixated on the back of his head, the silent threat that he’d skin him alive if he didn’t make his bed before they left sitting on his shoulders. Bill was what Dipper considered a ‘neat freak’, and had felt his wrath on more than one occasion already in the seventeen hours he’d known him. 

The first thing Dipper did when he stood up was fix his bed.

His hair was a mess. He could _feel_ how out of place it was without even looking in the mirror, but he couldn’t be bothered to brush it. Mornings were the worst. He’d be lucky if he managed to get dressed without passing out from exhaustion. He took a deep breath and stretched in an attempt to hide his light-headedness, then made his way to the dresser at the end of his bed and slipped on a pair of blue jeans (the only normally colored pair the facility had let him have. He hated those weird colored pants.  Seriously, did someone spill a bottle of paint on them and think ‘hey, this is cool, let’s make our bottom half as diverse as our top half!’ Like people weren’t crazy enough with fashion already!) and matched it with a grey T-shirt and the one light-blue flannel he was given. 

Bill must have put his shoes on while Dipper was getting dressed, because when he turned around, he was waiting at the door for him, arms crossed and an unreadable expression on his face (probably much closer to anger or annoyance than anything else). Dipper took another deep breath, tied his shoes, and swallowed two of the pills setting on his nightstand before following Bill out the door and down the hall to the cafeteria. 

“You’re brushing your hair when we get back or I’m doing it myself.” Dipper nodded.

The trip was…awkward. They walked side by side, looking anywhere but at each other. Neither of them spoke. It wasn’t like they had gotten into an argument or something, but he guessed being forced to stay with a stranger would leave for some awkward moments like this. It made him wish they were closer.

Dipper rubbed his arm with his left hand, shoulders hunched up to make him smaller. It was a habit he had formed when he was in high school. He hated standing out - the complete opposite of Mabel, who joined the theater group and solo and ensemble and poetry club simply so she could have the spotlight - but Dipper was of average in height, so the slouching helped him stay under the radar. Bill, however, stood straight and proud, having about five inches on Dipper easy with him straight upright. 

His roommate glanced at him, eyeing the way he cowered as the crowd grew closer. He had seemed fine, sitting outside the cafeteria yesterday when Bill first saw him (he had made the connection that he was the same person after lying in bed awake for a couple hours. It’s amazing what your brain can come up with at two in the morning.), but he wasn’t actually _in_ the crowd then. He hoped the kid wasn’t claustrophobic or something. 

Dipper watched him from the corner of his eye, saw his focus go from his left wrist down his right arm and then back up to his face, his expression bitter and - was that _fear?_ “Kid, where’s your pulse tracker?” Dipper blinked and rubbed both of his wrists, and sure enough, both wrists were bare. He must have forgotten to put it back on after his shower last night. _Technically_ he wasn’t supposed to take it off even then, but his wrist was raw from the cheap material. You’d think that a big company like Vital Technologies could spend a little extra on a bracelet that determined whether someone’s heart was still keeping them alive or not. 

He hummed and shrugged, focused on the stairs ahead of him. “Must’ve forgotten to- hey, wait, slow down, where are we going?” Bill had grabbed his hand right as they made it half-way down the stairs, and started dragging him back towards their room.

“You need that bracelet, Dipper.” Dipper wondered how much he knew, what that letter really said.

Dipper tried to pull his hand out of Bill’s grasp, only to have his mechanical arm tighten its grip. The brunette was convinced his fingers might break. “It’s, like, ten minutes! I can get it when we get back, Bill, we’re going to miss breakfast!” In reality, Dipper wasn’t concerned with food. He was exhausted from the walk already, he just wanted to get to the cafeteria and sit down. He wasn’t sure he’d make it all the way back up to their room and then down again to the ground floor without a break before he passed out.

Bill shook his head, pulling Dipper behind him at a pace a tad too quick to be comfortable for him. “We’ll wait until lunch, then.” Dipper couldn’t wait until lunch, he was already running off of borrowed energy. He couldn’t lose any more weight.

“I-” 

“I’ve got a couple granola bars you can eat until then. I know you need to eat, kid, just trust me. You need that bracelet. You don’t know what could happen in ten minutes.” Dipper swallowed, and made no further comment. Why should he trust him? And _damnit,_ why did he know so much?

Bill didn’t let go of Dipper’s hand until they reached their door, and he had to get the key out of his pocket to unlock it. He gently pushed Dipper inside by the small of his back, and watched as he made his way into the small bathroom right inside the door. Dipper heard the door click shut and then the shuffling of bed sheets while he snapped his pulse tracker over his left wrist. He flinched at the cold metal pressing into his skin on the underside of his wrist, just hard enough to leave small indentions where it sat. The white bracelet beeped twice, buzzed for a moment, then started to track his pulse on the small black screen. He waited for a couple cycles of readings to pass before he returned to the main room.

Bill was sitting on his bed, reading through the letter Dipper had given to him the day before. The paper looked worn already, folded and unfolded and handled too many times. Dipper briefly wondered how many times he’d read it. 

He stood up when Dipper laid back on his bed, and moved to the small pantry. Dipper noticed his grey bottle of pills sitting back in its place as his roommate picked out two granola bars, and wondered when he had put them back. Bill walked to the side of Dipper’s bed and held both bars out to him. “Here.” He took both out of his hands and started unwrapping the first, mumbling a thanks. “You have to eat both of them.” He nodded. “They may not taste very good, but it’ll give you the energy you need until lunch.” He nodded again, and took a bite. It was bitter, mostly tasteless. He had to force back a gag, but he did as he was told and finished both.

Silence fell, the same uncomfortable, suffocating silence Dipper had experienced yesterday. But now, with another body in the room, Dipper had an excuse to cut through it. He had a question he wanted the answer to, anyway.

“So…” Dipper started, standing and tossing the wrappers into the trash bin next to the pantry before returning to his place on his mattress, “what uh, what was…” he cleared his throat, “what was in the letter?” He felt like by asking he was invading Bill’s privacy, but Dipper knew the letter was probably about him anyway, and used that as an excuse to cover the guilt pooling in his stomach.

Bill blinked at him, the phone he had been occupying himself with while Dipper ate falling out of his hands. “He didn’t tell you?” Dipper raised an eyebrow. The laugh he received made his body stiffen. “He didn’t tell you! Oh, this is _priceless_! His nephew, the one he talked so highly about, doesn’t even know that he told all of his secrets to a complete stranger!” His laugh - _his fucking laugh._ Dipper shivered at the sound, like metal scraping against concrete. It was terrifying. Everything he said about this guy not being so bad was thrown out the barred window. 

Dipper glared at his roommate, and stated the question again: “What is in the letter?” He had a right to know, now. Especially if “all his secrets” were written in it.

The metal of Bill’s right arm glinted in the dim light of the room as he waved him off. “Nothing big, kid.” He laid back, turning his head to look at Dipper. ‘Nothing big’? Didn’t he just say _all his secrets?_

His hysteric moment was completely gone, replaced with a serious expression. It unnerved Dipper how quickly his mood could change. He saw his roommate swallow before he continued. “But it did tell me you have the _Shockwave_  synthetic.” Dipper nodded. He assumed as much. Ford had told him he was the first to have the artificial heart implant, he was sure most of the letter was just Ford lecturing Bill on how to take care of him, and he had to admit he had done well in the short time. Not that he needed taken care of. “Doctor Pines wrote down all the rules you needed to follow, and gave me strict instructions to make sure you stick to them.” He paused, “so far, not very impressed.” The smaller male rolled his eyes, failing to hide the hint of a smile at the corner of his pale lips. 

“Yeah, I tend to have a problem with that.”

“Yes, I see that.” The blonde snickered and stood, walking past Dipper’s bed to the slide closet next to the pantry. He gave Dipper a good smack on the head as he passed him. Dipper muttered an ‘ _ouch_!’ and rubbed the bump that was already forming as Bill spoke, “So make it _not_ a problem.” Dipper glared. Mechanical arms hurt.

Bill pulled out a small stand that held an old twenty inch screen television from the closet. Dipper could say with absolute certainty that it was the oldest thing in the entire building - his Great Uncle Ford included - and was extremely surprised when Bill pressed the power button and the screen hummed to life. “Woah, dude, where did you get that thing? It’s, like, eighty years old.” Dipper was exaggerating, they both knew that, but it didn’t stop Bill from rolling his eyes. 

“It’s an old tv from my mom’s house. I got bored one day, and convinced the staff to…help me move it in.” Bill bent down in front of the tv and plugged in a gaming system Dipper hadn’t noticed setting on the bottom shelf of the tv stand. He sat down in the floor between their beds with a wired controller in his hands and Dipper moved to sit next to him. It vaguely reminded him of when he sat in the living room with Mabel and they challenged each other at dumb multi-player games as children. Back when they didn’t have to worry about anything.

“How long were you living here alone?” The start up menu of Bill’s game popped up on the screen, an 8-bit landscape looping as old techno music played in the background.

Bill shrugged, eyes glued to the screen as he hit the “new game” button. “Eight months maybe? I’m not sure, I kind of lost track.” Dipper blinked. How had he managed to not go insane staying here without a roommate? Dipper had spent ten minutes alone waiting for him yesterday and he could have swore a murderer would walk in and chop him into bits, if the silence didn’t scramble his brains first. 

Dipper pulled his blanket off of his bed and wrapped it around his shoulders, sitting criss-cross next to Bill, watching his character onscreen. “Eight months? How long have you been here?” His roommate shrugged again, a frown pulling his lips down.

“About a year now.” The blonde subconsciously flexed the fingers of his prosthetic, cursing as his level restarted. Dipper nodded. A year ago. That seemed to be the time everything went wrong in the world.

“What happened?” Dipper knew it wasn’t his place to ask, but his curiosity was gnawing at the edges of his brain now and he just couldn’t stop himself. 

His roommate visibly bristled, another round of curses tumbling from his mouth as the tv screen lit up with the question _“play again?”_. He didn’t turn to face Dipper. “Damnit, I died again.”  He sighed, and then offered the controller to Dipper. “Wanna try, kid?”

Dipper didn’t move. “Bill-”

Bill pulled his hand and the controller back to him. “That’s right, you can’t play, you might get too into it.”

“No, Bill that’s not-“

“Hey, kid, I’m going to call you Pinetree.”

“What? Why?” 

The blonde frowned and hit the restart button, almost growling in response. “Because you don’t let things go.”

Dipper stared at his roommate silently for a moment before he sat back against his bed, eyeing the tv again. He mumbled an apology that the blonde ignored. “Your last name is Pines, kid. _Pines_.” Dipper ignored him.

 

They spent the next two hours wasting time in silence. Their first real, tangible, humane conversation and Dipper ruined it on question three. He was good at ruining things. Losing chances. It was kind of his thing. At some point, Dipper had moved back to his bed, propping his head up on his elbows at the foot of the bed. Dipper wasn’t sure what game Bill was playing, but it was incredibly boring. There was no real action, no suspense, no jumpscares or spooky monsters. He wondered where in hell he had found it, and why he enjoyed playing it. 

Dipper should’ve taken the opportunity to take a turn.

Dipper shifted his weight on the bed. “What game are you playing?” Bill shrugged. The brunette sat up, frowning, and searched for his phone in the sea of blankets on his bed. The quilts made him feel safe. If Dipper was in his room, he was usually buried under them. “What time is it?” His roommate shrugged again, eyes glued to the television as his avatar walked onscreen. Dipper blinked. “Are you giving me the silent treatment?” Blonde hair rustled as he shook his head no, and Dipper huffed. “Then why aren’t you answering me?”

“You ask too many questions, Pinetree, now shush. I’m trying to focus.” 

The male sitting on the bed let out a hysteric chuckle. “Focusing on what? This game is literally nothing but text and walking.” Bill didn’t answer. Dipper groaned, hands continuing to search for his phone. His fingers slipped over something smooth hidden in his quilts and he pulled it out with a triumphant _‘Aha!’._ He clicked the lock button, and read the time displayed over his twin’s face. 

His stomach growled. “What time does lunch start?”

“Eleven thirty.” Bill didn’t take his eyes of the screen as he responded. Maybe Dipper would give the game a try. Maybe there was something about a game with no action or plot or end goal that made it relaxing, or, something like that.

The brunet hummed. “It’s eleven forty-two.” Bill paused his game immediately, pressing the main menu button and then hitting power on the console and the tv before pushing the stand back into the closet and shutting the door. He dusted himself off, inhaling a deep breath, and it was only then that Dipper realized Bill had never eaten breakfast. He had put Dipper’s health before his, and gave him both granola bars so he would have energy. Bill must be starving.

He saw the blonde study him closely, eyes lingering on the pulse tracker strapped around his left wrist before speaking. “Let’s get a move on, Pines. Don’t want all the good food to be gone.” Dipper nodded, slipped on his shoes he had taken off an hour ago, and waited at the door as Bill (who had only realized he was shoeless when Dipper pulled on his own) turned his back to him and sat down to tie his blue and white sneakers.

Dipper’s pulse tracker beeped twice, two quick, high pitched noises that echoed in the small room and made Bill’s shoulders tense. Dipper coughed, panicked for a short moment when his _Shockwave_ continued to beat slightly out of rhythm, and flinched at the burning shock the pulse tracker administered. It burned his fingertips, made him lightheaded, but he felt his muscles relax when his heart fell back into its routine. 

“Hey kid, are you alright?” His roommate had stood and turned to him, worry displayed on his face that he was too panicked to hide. Dipper nodded with a frown, and heard the blonde sigh in relief. He might need Bill’s help with the stairs (his body was extremely exhausted now, and his limbs were still shaking from the quick burst of adrenaline he couldn’t avoid), but he was fine. Bill threw him a sad smile. “I always think the worst when I hear that. I thought your heart stopped.” Dipper nodded, assured him he was fine again, and followed him out the door and down the hall for take two. Out of everything that they had talked about in the last two and a half hours, one thing weighed at the front of Dipper’s mind.

How did he know what the pulse tracker’s beeping meant?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed I am very bad at summaries. Summaries are my enemy. 
> 
> I had planned on posting this with the first chapter but I ended up falling asleep (I write better at night, so I tend to stay up late. Don't follow my example-). I'm not sure how often I'll update. I'll try for every other week but, honestly, if I have a deadlines I'll probably never do it because I'll panic and avoid it. So! I'll try my best, but who knows!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	3. One Rainy Day, The Start Of Many

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill is not a good influence on Dipper's first full day. The rain is cold, their clothes are soaked, but hey, when's a better time to have a normal conversation?

“So, kid,” Bill crumpled his empty chip bag and tossed it onto his tray - actually, they were Dipper’s chips, but the nineteen year old hadn’t eaten more than half of his sandwich before he threw his chips at Bill’s face after a particularly…embarrassing comment about Dipper’s, uh, ‘physical activity’, and he never asked for them back, so Bill happily took care of them. Looking at the kid’s tray now, his stomach burned. Dipper hadn’t eaten anything else. “What do you say, wanna take a short walk outside?”

Dipper’s eyes lit up at Bill’s question, his pupils dilating in the fluorescent lighting. It was the first time the kid had actually looked up from the table since they had sat down. “Can we do that?” Bill sat back in the blue plastic chair he had claimed, throwing one arm over its back, and gave Dipper a smug look.

“Of course we can, Pinetree! Stick with me, and we can do anything we want!” Dipper was under the impression that Bill was not a particularly well-behaved person, and while he didn’t doubt that they _could_ do anything, he was positive it wouldn’t be without breaking the rules. He almost felt the responsibility to put as much distance between him and his roommate as he could manage. Almost.

His chest constricted with the thought of going against the authority, joy pooling in his stomach and smile twitching the corners of his lips. He could _taste_ the adrenaline already and _holy shit_ , how he missed it. He missed the thrill of not knowing what would happen next, of the uncertainty of each step he took out in the woods. He missed the cool air brushing his skin, the refreshing scent of the trees that gave him life, the small creatures he managed to befriend and the streams that spoke to him once he got close enough. He wanted to hear the wind whisper his name again — his _real_ name, the name he was given at birth, the name that rarely passed others’ lips, in favor of the silly nickname that stuck to him years after its initial appearance.

He missed the feeling of being at home.

Dipper stood, carrying his tray - and Bill’s after it was thrust into his hands - to the end of the cafeteria, and tossed their trash into the waste bin. Bill had followed close behind the eager teen, hands on his hips as his eyes scanned Dipper’s back, down his arms to his wrists. He waited for him to set the empty trays in their places, and then took Dipper’s arm for the second time that day, dragging him off in the direction of the main staircase. “C’mon, kid, this way.” He steered him around the stairs at the last second, towards a plain white door hidden among the shadows of passing feet overhead. Bill gave a quick glance to the surrounding area - more for fun and to see how paranoid he could make the other than to make sure they weren’t being watched - and then slipped himself and Dipper through the passage in one swift movement.

It was dark in the room, save for the small sliver of light slipping in under the door, but Bill made no move to turn on a light. He brushed past Dipper, maneuvering over boxes and cleaning supplies he couldn’t see with an ease that proved he had been there on multiple occasions. Dipper heard Bill’s knees crack as he bent down, and then the grating and groaning of metal echoing down a vent. He scoffed. “We’re not actually going to crawl down a vent, right?” He wasn’t in the mood to to be a part of a cliché movie right then.

His roommate grunted, pulling something off of the wall and setting it gently to the side. The light from under the door threw sparks over it. _Metal_ , Dipper noted; he wondered if it was cold. He wondered if Bill could feel it. “We most certainly are, kid, now let’s get going before someone gets curious about the noise.”

The brunette groaned, stepping forward with his hands out in front of him. He could vaguely see the outline of obstacles on the floor, but nothing above knee-level was visible. Bill grabbed one of his outstretched hands and pulled him down to the floor, and Dipper yelped in surprise. His pulse tracker beeped twice, Dipper coughed. “I was trying _not_ to fall, thank you,” he glared.

The rustling of clothing could be heard, accompanied with a quick movement Dipper assumed was a shrug. “You were taking too long, Pinetree,” he pushed Dipper’s shoulder toward the grate-less opening, “now get a move on, it’s only going to get colder.” Dipper huffed, crawling into the vent.

It was smaller than the grate had led him to believe, forcing his head at an awkward angle to fit, but still large enough for him to crawl on his knees instead of forcing him to pull himself along on his stomach. The metal creaked and shifted with his movement, then doubled in its complaints when Bill followed after him, crawling along just a few feet back.

His cackle echoed down the cramped space. “Nice ass, Pinetree!”

Dipper glared at the darkness ahead of him, his cheeks burning in embarrassment. “Stop staring at my butt!”

“I can’t help it, kid!” Dipper could hear the smirk in his words, could _see_ the amused look in his eyes as he spoke. He groaned and dropped his head, resisting the overwhelming urge to kick his roommate _right in his flawless golden face._

His pulse tracker beeped. He took a deep breath.

Bill’s mechanical arm clinked against the flimsy metal, creating a rhythm that lulled Dipper, almost like a belt in a washing machine.

They came to a branch in the vent, one path going off to their left and the other leading on ahead. “Take a left, kid.” Dipper hummed in acknowledgment, following his instructions.

The metal got colder the farther the went. The farther they went, the colder his hands got. Dipper turned right when the vent changed direction. It was much brighter down at the end, blinding after being in the dark for the duration of their travels. Dipper griped the metal grate in front of him with both hands and shook it. It didn’t so much as budge. He huffed, sitting back on his knees, hunched over to fit his tall form in the limiting space. “Are you sure this opens, Bill?” He glanced as far over his shoulder as he could, catching the end of his roommate’s nod.

“Should come right off, Pinetree.” Dipper nodded, placing his hands on the metal again. It was freezing, biting into his skin as he pushed, the small muscles in his back flexing as they worked. He grunted, sitting back at his failure.

“Are you _sure_?”

“Kid, I come out here almost every day. I seriously doubt they bolted it back down.” Dipper ran a hand through his hair. Bill was sitting similar to Dipper, his breath tickling the back of his neck. “Just push harder.” The brunette scoffed, placing his hands back on the grate.

He was scrawny, his body never quite healthy enough to carry much weight. He always had some type of medicine in his system, making him too weak for muscle building. He had been a great runner back in high school, one of the best sophomore year, but his condition worsened around the second semester of junior year and he had to give it up. His trips to the park or the beach or the small wooded areas around were limited. He had always been convinced that his condition had gotten so bad because his parents had cut him off from nature. He could have recovered.

Dipper threw his shoulder into the metal guard in a last attempt. It groaned and screamed, and gave way under his weight, sending him tumbling into the concrete on the other side. He gave a satisfactory _‘ha!’_ back at the opening just as Bill climbed through, his long appendages uncurling from his body in an unnatural manner. His roommate offered him his hand, and Dipper took it, allowing him to pull him up off the ground. He hadn’t realized the concrete was wet. It must have recently rained.

Bill patted him on the shoulder. “Good work, kid.” Dipper gave a curt nod in response, his lips half-turned up in a smile. He brushed the dust off his pants.

The sky was overcast, gloomy to most Oregon residents, but Dipper looked at the sky, hazel eyes sparkling. Bill hadn’t expected the kid to react like this, curling his fingers through the fresh air in front of him, eyes gulping down every detail they could manage from the landscape. His hair was messy, unkempt, and the wind tossing the free strands made it worse. He _had_ to remember to make him brush his hair.

The first raindrop made Bill flinch. It hit his cheek, right below his eye. He wiped it away quickly, metal warm against his skin, glaring up at the grey clouds. He enjoyed being outside because it was the only thing he ever got to see that wasn’t in that damned color scheme from inside, but today it was _irritatingly_ similar. He _hated_ it. But the kid didn’t seem to mind.

The rain started to fall in heavy sheets, large droplets staining his clothes, pasting his dulled blonde hair to his forehead and his blue T-shirt to his thin frame. He wiped his face again, moving back towards Dipper and taking his arm. “C’mon, kid, we don’t need you getting sick out here.” Dipper protested at first, pulling against Bill’s grip (his arm was warm. How did that work?), but followed him when he moved away from the vent, towards a small wooden gazebo out in the center of the space they were in. Bill understood the kid’s resistance; from what he knew, Dipper had been on bed rest for two weeks after his surgery, and another four after that were spent in therapy. He didn’t know anything about how he lived before he came to Doctor Pines, but from the way he was acting, he had a pretty easy guess that he hadn’t been given many chances to get outside. He was probably thrilled to stand out in the fresh air again, despite the temperature being close to forty degrees and the rain chilling them to the bone.

Bill himself was relatively happy to get outside. It _had_ been a couple days since he’d visited (Dipper’s arrival was very inconvenient for him, so he’d sadly missed yesterday), and the fresh air relieved him. The windows in their room were barred over, welded and nailed into the metal window frame, to ensure that it could’t be opened (and it couldn’t. Bill had tried. On multiply occasions.). He understood the safety precautions the facility was taking, albeit only just, but it was ridiculous how the patients were kept under lock and key. This place was meant to improve their lives, that’s what they had been told, but all it’d done to Bill was crush him. Sure, it was nice to get his arm back, but he wouldn’t have even _needed_ it if it hadn’t been for this _stupid fucking hole in the woods._

Both males took a seat on the wooden bench under the gazebo, silently watching the rain bounce off the sidewalk and drown the dull grass around them. The storm was soothing, the cool air tickling goosebumps on their skin, and mixed with his exhaustion, Dipper had almost fallen asleep, leaning back against the railing behind him, before Bill finally spoke. “Some walk this turned out to be, huh?” Dipper hummed in response, his head lulling to face Bill and one eye forcing itself open to look at him. “Didn’t expect it to rain today.”

“It’s fine.” Dipper mumbled, arms crossed over his chest. The flannel he wore uncomfortably clung to his skin, and the heaviness of his wet T-shirt pulled it down just enough to expose a fraction of his collar bones. Bill’s shirt was in generally the same condition, but lacked the long sleeves of Dipper’s flannel. He didn’t know if the lack of sleeves harmed or benefitted his body temperature. Dipper was freezing.

They were silent for another few moments, Dipper’s eyes falling closed again. Bill decided that, if they were going to sit and wait out the storm, he was going to use that time to find out a bit about the kid.

He decided to start off easy. “So, kid, what’s…” he paused, searching for an end to his question, “what’s your favorite color?”

Dipper snorted, closed eyes upturned with the smile pasted to his lips. His wet hair hung across his forehead in clumped strands, what looked to be a few oddly placed freckles peeking out at Bill from behind their curtain. Dipper didn't open his eyes when he responded. “Blue.”

The blonde scoffed. “That’s it? ‘Blue’? Come on, kid, be more specific!”

“You asked for my favorite color, not my favorite _shade_ of my favorite color.” His roommate rolled his eyes, white teeth shining through a smile, and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Cerulean. That's my favorite color.” Bill hummed.

“Next question; how old are you?”

Dipper sat up from leaning back against the railing and shook his head. He had to wipe some of the water that dripped onto his face. “No no, hold on a second, you asked a question, now it’s my turn.”

Bill narrowed his eyes. “Since when?”

“Since I decided I want to know what _your_ favorite color is.” His roommate chuckled, his eyes bright, and it made Dipper smile. He decided to ignore the warm feeling in his stomach when he laughed.

Bill tilted his head in thought, his damp locks brushing against Dipper’s shoulder. “I don’t really have a favorite color, Pinetree, but if I had to choose…” he paused, tapping one metal finger against his chin, “maybe green?” Dipper raised an eyebrow. “Dark green, just like the color of the needles on a,” he leaned closer to Dipper, and tapped his nose, “pine tree.” Dipper swatted his hand away, the both of them chuckling. For someone who had apparently been antisocial for eight months, he sure was a flirt.

“ _Now_ it’s my turn. How old are you?”

“Nineteen. You?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Oh, great, so sometime within the next year or whenever your birthday is - probably some weird date like June twenty-second or something - I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night to someone screaming Taylor Swift as loud as possible.”

Bill laughed, and Dipper forced himself to ignore the fluttering in his stomach. “Who says it’ll just be on my birthday, kid?”

Dipper rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the warning.”

“You’re welcome, Pinetree!”

The brunette chuckled, shaking his head. “I can’t believe that stuck.”

Bill shrugged. “You get what you get.”

They fell quiet, content listening to the pattering of the rain on the roof of the gazebo. Everything was grey, from the brick of the facility to the sidewalk to the grass still dead from the winter season. February was Dipper’s least favorite month.

There were doors on the outside of the building, Dipper noticed, that were blocked off from the inside. During development, this must have been the courtyard. The gazebo, and the sidewalk, and the fact that it was located in the ‘U’ of the building all made sense. Dipper wondered why they would have closed it off, and why the hell that vent lead right out to it. Speaking of which, “How did you find that vent?”

Bill shrugged, crossing his arms. They had begun to dry off a bit, but their clothes were still damp and extremely uncomfortable. He really wanted to go change. “My psychiatrist put me in time out.”

Dipper chuckled, nudging Bill’s shoulder. “You got put in time out?”

His roommate rolled his eyes. “ _Yes_ , Pinetree, I got put in time out. She thought I had an ‘attitude’-"

“You always have an attitude.”

He glared. “She locked me in the broom closet until I apologized.” Dipper laughed, a laugh so bright his eyes lit up under the dark clouds. It was a beautifully happy sound, and it made Bill smile.

The rain slowed to a drizzle. “Hey Pinetree?” Dipper hummed, his eyes falling shut and his head leaning back against the rail again. “Who’s the girl in your picture? The one on your nightstand?”

Dipper blinked an eye open to look at his roommate. His face was blank as he waited for Dipper’s response. “My sister. Mabel.” Bill nodded.

“You two look alike.”

Dipper let his eyes close again, hands resting over his stomach. “Yeah, we’re twins.” Bill hummed. Dipper didn’t see how he clenched his jaw, or how his eyes dulled or the frown that turned his lips down.

The sound of the rain stopped, silence enveloping them. He felt Bill stand, and opened his eyes. “C’mon, kid, while the rain’s taking a break.” Dipper gratefully took the hand that was outstretched to him. His palm was cool from the low temperature. “Let’s get you into some warm clothes. We don’t need you getting sick the first day here.” Bill pulled Dipper up from the bench and held him by the elbow until he steadied himself. He was completely exhausted. “That would be bad.”

Dipper scoffed. “For me, or for you?”

Bill blinked. “Um, yes.” Dipper laughed, that _beautiful_ laugh, and shook his head. “Now let’s go, Pinetree. You need a nap.”

Dipper hummed. "A nap sounds nice.”

“I know, Pinetree. Let’s go.” He paused, holding one of Dipper’s arms as they stepped out of the gazebo. “And _damnit_ , Pinetree, we are brushing that mop of hair as soon as we get back!” Dipper laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just say, I HATE the beginning of this chapter. I'm not happy with how ANY of it turned out, but I started it three different times, and this one didn't suck as bad as the other, so yeah. This happened. I know it's slow, but I didn't feel like enough had been said between the two yet to advance the story. 
> 
> Also, I know this took forever to get out. I love writing, but this chapter just killed me. I won't promise the next one will be out sooner, and I'm not going to set up an update schedule because I know for a fact that I won't follow it, but I'll try to get a chapter out at least once a month.
> 
> And if your birthday happens to be June 22nd, I apologize. That just happened to be the first date to pop into my head-


	4. Sister Appearances and Night Time Shenanigans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mabel calls, and Bill discovers Dipper's secret.

The only time Dipper ever saw Bill frown - _really_ frown, a frown that drained the happiness from a whole three-foot radius surrounding him - was when Dipper was on the phone with Mabel.

_“She was_ screaming _, Dipper! It was like she’d gotten shot, or something!”_ Dipper chuckled, listening to his sister recount a scene from one of her nursing classes. _“You should have seen her face! As soon as the scalpel touched the cadaver it was just- BOOM! Blood went_ all over _her!”_ Dipper laughed at his twin’s antics, could see her waving her arms in the air as if she were right there next to him. _“It was so disgusting!”_

Mabel had called him every free chance she got after their parents went back home to California and told her he was living with their Great Uncle Ford. The details were spared, but it was enough for her to know that Dipper was still alive and doing better and she didn’t have to worry. She was trying extremely hard to make it up to Dipper for deciding to finish school and go to college, rather than staying with him. She had stayed with him the first month or two, but once their parents said they would be taking Dipper across the country, Mabel had made plans with her friend to live at her house for the remaining three months of high school and through the summer before she moved in for college. Liz, the friend Mabel had been staying with, left for London two weeks before Mabel went to college. Staying at her friend’s house _with_ her friend was great; staying at her friend’s house _after her friend moved out_ was much more awkward. Mabel moved into her dorm room three days early for the one-week early move in day.

Balancing her concern for her brother _and_ the amount of school work she had as a nursing major left her very little time for sleep. Her eyes, a beautiful hazel like her twin’s, donned purple bags underneath. She became paranoid from her lack of rest, her grades were getting worse, she spent more time on her art than she did with homework — she was a wreck. The guilt of leaving Dipper was eating her from the inside out.

The first few conversations she and Dipper had over the phone after his surgery were purely Mabel’s apologies, and a lot of crying - on both their parts. He knew Mabel was sorry; he didn’t blame her for staying in Piedmont in the slightest (he was ashamed to know he would’ve done the same thing), but the apologies were starting to get annoying. When she began to apologize for the eighteenth time during their third call, Dipper told her that if she said it one more time, he wouldn’t answer her calls anymore. She stopped apologizing, but her guilt never completely left.

“Ew, Mabel, that’s-” he chuckled, “did you at least help her clean up?” Dipper glanced up when the bathroom door opened and Bill stepped out, drying his hair with a towel and making his way to his dresser. The blonde raised one eyebrow at him. Dipper mouthed “Mabel” in response, and he nodded, turning to pull a cotton T-shirt out of his top drawer and slipping it over his head that complimented the grey sweatpants (which sported Vital Tech’s azure logo) he wore for pajamas. 

The two had grown closer over the last couple of months. They were comfortable with each other. They expertly maneuvered around each other in the mornings, moving through routines that had developed subconsciously as their time together grew longer. It was strange, how well they worked together. Bill had actually been a responsible human being for the first time in eight months, making sure Dipper was eating enough to keep his weight steady and reminding him to take his medicine and making sure his pulse tracker was always at his wrist, and in return, Dipper kept him from doing stupid things that would get him caught by security. Having Dipper as a roommate also got his psychiatrist off his back after the first two weeks; Bill would never admit it, but _God,_ he was thankful for the kid. 

They were good for each other.

Bill shook out the water in his damp hair and fell back onto his bed with a satisfy hum, holding his phone above his head as he aimlessly scrolled through anything his fingertips came across. Dipper’s eyes trailed him, his own phone still held to his ear as Mabel continued her story Dipper was only vaguely listening to. Something about _“of course I did!”_ and _“I told her she looked cute with red in her hair.”_ He hummed in response in the appropriate places, giving the impression that he was still listening. He was preoccupied with…well, it had to be _something_ , and couldn’t get himself to focus on his twin’s words. He slipped in an affirmative _“Mhmm”_ in one of the female’s pauses. 

Dipper was a relatively good actor. A horrible liar, ironically, but a decent actor. If he was on the phone with anyone else, it would have worked.

A shrill, nobody-could-pull-that-off-but-Mabel scream echoed through the phone, prompting Dipper’s own yelp of surprise as his body jumped three feet off his bed, and he instinctively tossed his phone to the floor, out of ear-shot. His roommate had sat up at Dipper’s outburst, wide, worried eyes watching the brunette clamp his mouth shut and scramble from the bed for his phone before the blonde fell back laughing, clutching his stomach and rolling off the bed. 

Dipper, frazzled and red-faced, managed to pull his phone back up to his ear. He ignored the two quick beeps his pulse tracker made in protest to the shenanigans, hearing Mabel’s laughter mix with that of his roommate’s high-pitched, obnoxious one. He shot a glare at the perpetrator he could see. “Mabel, what the _hell_ was that?!” He shrieked, pulling himself back up onto his comforter. 

_“That’s what’chu get, Bro-Bro!”_

Bill’s laughter had gone silent, in that stage of breathless huffs and wheezes; he was doubled in on himself, lying on his side, tears sitting in the corners of his eyes as he struggled for air. With a gasp, he pushed himself up off the floor and stumbled over to Dipper’s bed, both arms still clutching his aching stomach, and collapsed next to him. He wrapped his arms around Dipper’s and set his head against his shoulder as another laughing fit hit him. Dipper glared at the blonde. “What did I do?” 

Mabel took a few gulping breaths in to calm herself. _“You were totally ignoring me, Dip!”_ Dipper’s eyebrows furrowed, mouth open to object. _“And don’t try to tell me you weren’t, I started asking you a bunch of random questions and you agreed to everything! I even asked you if I could have my grappling hook back, and you said_ yes _!”_ Dipper huffed, feeling Bill’s chest rise with a sharp intake of breath. Dipper must have really been out of it; she was _never_ getting that gun back. _Ever_.

Bill threw his arm over Dipper’s shoulders and moved his head up next to the phone, gulping down a few greedy breaths before he spoke into it, his ear almost resting against Dipper’s hand where it held the phone. “That was _priceless,_ Shooting Star! _Oh!_ you should have seen his face! He threw his phone across the room and _everything_!” Bill collapsed back onto Dipper’s bed in another hysterical fit before he came back up to hear Mabel’s response. 

The female twin never heard from Dipper’s roommate much, but they got along well - super well, actually. Their personalities were almost identical, they were a great pair. She was shocked when Dipper had told her the blonde actually _avoided_ him when he was on the phone with her. _“You should’ve got it on video!”_ she pouted.

Bill leaned over against Dipper, the arm that wasn’t curled around the other’s shoulders gesturing out to something in front of him as he spoke. “I wish I would’ve! People would _pay_ to see that face, Star!” Dipper couldn't hold back his chuckle, his roommate’s grin still wide across his face. He was always happy like this when he talked to Mabel; it didn’t make sense to him why he would ignore her. “And we could charge extra for that girly scream!”

Dipper scoffed. “No one would pay to hear Mabel screaming.”

His roommate shook his head, pushing himself off of Dipper to turn towards him. “Not _hers_ , Pinetree. Yours!” Dipper laughed and shoved Bill’s face away, the other swatting at his hands as he fell over onto Dipper’s pillow. 

“Asshole”

_“He speaks the truth!”_ Mabel interjected. He could see her throwing her arms through the air at the other end of the call. Metaphorically, of course, but twin telepathy is an interesting concept. _“You have more feminine qualities than I do!”_ That was a lie, but her point still stood. Dipper was a very _feminine_ male. High voice that never seemed to come down enough during puberty, a thin, relatively muscle-less body, large hazel doe-like eyes, and hips that should have belonged to his sister.

“Mabel!” he exclaimed, pushing Bill’s head away from the phone again. 

He heard her laugh at the other end of the line. _“You know it’s true, Bro-Bro!”_ Dipper’s cheeks flushed as he switched the phone to his other hand, struggling to keep Bill from listening with the other. _“You’re like a little fairy princess, sprinkling your magical fairy dust over aaaaall the children of the world.”_

Dipper groaned, flopping back onto his bed. Bill followed. “Mabel, that can be taken in multiple ways.” Bill finally managed to wrestle Dipper’s hand down, pinning it under him as he leaned over top of Dipper’s chest to hear Mabel through the phone.

She made a noise of disgust, and Dipper faintly heard the sound of her feet padding around her dorm room. _“Ew, Dipper! get your head out of the gutter!”_ Bill snorted a laugh.

“Yeah, Pinetree, what’re you doing thinking things like that?” Dipper rolled his eyes, hoping Bill was in an odd enough angle that he couldn’t see the smile gracing his lips. He grunted as he pulled his wrist out from underneath of Bill’s thighs that were holding it down, flexing his fingers before he rested his hand on Bill’s back. The blonde held himself up by his elbows, craning is neck around to get his ear next to the phone.

The male twin shook his head before he spoke, even though Mabel couldn’t see it. “I’m simply suggesting that those words in that sentence when heard out of context could be weird.” Bill chuckled, adjusting his weight over to one arm so he could turn to look back at him, his other arm setting lightly against Dipper’s ribs to keep him balanced. The light touch made Dipper squirm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Anything can be taken out of context, kid! That doesn’t mean you have to take it like that!” Dipper laughed, and on the other end of the phone, Mabel smiled. It was nice to hear Dipper happy again. It made her heart feel fuzzy and warm. She heard Bill give a quiet _‘boop’,_ and Dipper laughed again. She could see him swatting at his roommate with a goofy grin.

Mabel was surprised at how well the two males got along. They didn’t really share any of the same interests (except for the few books Dipper had managed to convince Bill to let him read after he considered himself stable enough for the emotional commitment), but from what Dipper had told her, after that first day they “just clicked”. Mabel was almost jealous of the two of them. 

She heard the rustling of bed sheets, and then Dipper quietly laughing. If Mabel were a mean sister, she would have commented on how girlish he sounded, giggling like that. She had vowed to try and be a bit nicer to her brother, after leaving him to fight alone. “Ha! That little laugh sounds like a girl’s!” But Bill had her covered.

 “I didn’t know you were ticklish, Pinetree! You’ve been holding out on me these past three months!” Dipper yelped when he poked his side again, and tried to push him off. He never realized how much heavier Bill was, just from the extra bit of muscle he had that Dipper’s body never managed.

“I’m not ticklish!” he immediately countered, but the damage was done. He was doomed.

His body tensed as Bill, who was kneeling on the bed next to his lying figure, jabbed at his sides. He dropped his phone next to his head and curled in on himself to shield him from the assault, but the assailant just found a new target, fingers lightly brushing over the exposed skin of his stomach as his shirt rode up with his wriggling. _“Go for his ribs! His ribs and the back of his legs!”_ Mabel shouted loud enough to be heard through the phone, discarded in the blankets on Dipper’s bed.

His sister was a traitor. He voiced as much.

He thrashed around, contagious laugh spilling into the air. “Thanks for the tip, Shooting Star!” Bill shouted back to her, voice shaking with his giggling over the other boy. Dipper twisted and turned, covered his torso with his arms only to have his roommate go for the backside of his thighs and knees; he gasped pleads of mercy out through laughter and tears and one of the largest smiles he’d ever worn. He grabbed at the blonde’s hands as he leaned over him, pushing them away from his body, but Bill only pulled Dipper up and back into his chest, holding both of his thin wrists with his right arm and resuming his tickling with the other. The metal of Bill’s arm bit into Dipper’s skin, pushing his pulse tracker down on blue veins and pale flesh. It beeped its warning at him, yelling _‘your heartbeat is out of control!’_ , but over the last three months, Dipper had learned to just ignore it.

Two weeks after Dipper moved in, he grew bored of sitting around. He had watched Bill play through that dumb video game, and convinced him to let him play afterwards. Dipper would pull the television out himself when Bill was busy doing other things (and by ‘busy’, the blonde was just bumbling aimlessly around his room, rearranging objects that didn’t please his eye and making both boys’ beds repeatedly and yelling at his roommate to _“stop dragging those stupid quilts around, Pinetree, or I swear-“)_. Eventually he would join Dipper on the floor in front of the TV, using the brunette as a back reset or lying his head on Dipper’s lap. They wasted a lot of time that way. 

Dipper beat the game. Four times. 

The time they didn’t spend eating down in the cafeteria or in their room was divided between the therapy Dipper was scheduled for (and, during the first week after Dipper’s arrival, Bill’s own therapy sessions that hadn’t been canceled yet), and enjoying the fresh air outside. The downpours of rain puttered out in  late March, and by then Dipper had conditioned enough to take a proper walk. He and Bill made laps around the empty courtyard, working their way up from a quarter of a mile, to a half, to one, to two. Dipper’s arrhythmia had majorly improved with the exercise, and at some point in the second month his pulse tracker had stopped its palpitation warnings almost completely. He still got the high-pitched beeping sequence when his heart rate sped up above the regulated set rhythm, but he began to ignore it. His paranoia had gotten the best of him, at first, but he had finally convinced himself (and Bill, because holy shit, he was more concerned when Dipper’s pulse tracker went off than _he_ was) that when you do exercise, having a fast heart rate is normal. This was kindergarten stuff, common sense. While it was terrifying at first, without the knowledge that his Shockwave would, in fact, keep up with him, he was thrilled to finally get back to nature.

“Bill! St- sto- aha! Stop! Please!” Tears blurred his vision, his wide smile hurting his cheeks. Bill’s face matched his, eyes sparkling and happy and _bright_ and _God,_ if Dipper could only see one thing for the rest of his life, he wanted it to be that slightly crooked grin. 

Bill laughed, and Dipper also decided that no matter how obnoxious the sound was on the front, he would sell his soul to hear it again. “What do I get for showing you mercy?” Mischief danced in gold, eyes studying the curve of Dipper’s upturned lips and the way his cheeks filled out, no longer gaunt and tight against his cheekbones. His brown curls were frazzled from his struggling, and again he caught sight of something brushed against his forehead. He wished he had a free hand - one occupied with Dipper’s wrists and the other relentlessly tickling his sides - just so he could oblige the urge and brush the hair away from Dipper’s face.

Dipper wrenched one of his hands free, grabbing at Bill’s wrist weakly, his skin soft compared to the rounded metal that had held his own wrist moments before. “An-anything!” He gasped, curling into himself in Bill’s lap. “Whatever you - ha! W-whatever you want! Just - aha! Just, please stop!” 

The tickling ceased, and Dipper, gasping for air and finally wiping the tears from his eyes, tilted his head back in Bill’s lap to see his face. He was tapping his metal fingers against his chin, a thoughtful expression on his face. Dipper could still hear his sister laughing from the phone that was lying at Bill’s knee. “Anything, hmm?” Dipper warily nodded, his arms pulled up to his chest, one hand cradling the other. Bill hummed again, and even from his upside down angle, Dipper could see the mischievous glint in his honey eyes. “Okay then,” he paused for a moment, a smirk curling his lips, “kiss me.”

Dipper’s eyes widened, his breath catching in his throat and his face flushing a red that would rival tomato. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, and eventually managed to stutter, “I- you - are-” he paused, blinked, watched the grin on Bill’s face widen, “What?” His roommate cackled, completely contradicting the movement of him gently brushing the brunette’s hair, who defensively swatted his silver hand away and brushed it back into place over his forehead before sitting up. “You’re kidding, right?” He watched the other man shake his head, his sly smile curling over his lips. 

“Just a little goodnight kiss,” he leaned forward, turning his head to the side and pointing to his cheek, “just right here, a little peck on the cheek.” Dipper crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes in suspicion at the other.

He shook his head. “No way, I know that trick.”

His roommate sat back on his heels, an innocent facade hiding the smirk he wore. “What trick, Pinetree?”

He rolled his eyes. “The one where I go to kiss your cheek and you turn your head at the last second and I end up kissing your lips instead,” Dipper deadpanned, dropping his arms to his sides. His pulse tracker bracelet was silent, but his chest was aching. Laughter hurt. He coughed. _God,_ laughter fucking _hurt_.

“Now why would I do that, silly?” Wow, low blow. Bill shook his head. “I just want a little kiss on the cheek, that’s all.”

Dipper opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted before he could get his sass out. _“Uh, hey Dipper? You still there? Helloooo?”_ Dipper blinked, and both males turned their attention to the phone that sat between them. He hadn’t realized when Mabel’s laughter had died out, or when he kicked the phone over towards the wall. _“Dipper, are you okay?”_ Mabel would side with him, wouldn’t she? She’s his sister, she would understand that Dipper is just a tall bundle of anxiety and doesn’t want to go through the awkwardness of post-kissing-your-best-friend-slash-roommate, right?

The two males locked eyes for a moment, light brown studying hazel as Bill’s grin grew on his face. Dipper then came to the conclusion that no, Mabel would _not_ side with him on anything that involved preventing romance (not that there was romance between him and Bill, but that’s how Mabel would see it.).

Dipper lunged for the phone just as Bill dove to the side, snatching it right out from under his hand and pulling it up to his ear. Bill’s eyes were sparkling as he spoke into the phone. “Yes, Shooting Star, he’s perfectly fine, now would you mind telling your dear brother here that he has to pay the tickle fee or get tickled again so he should just kiss me already?

Bill had to hold the device away from his ear as Dipper’s twin squealed. Dipper reached for the phone, but Bill turned away from him and pulled the phone back to his face. He heard Mabel’s voice mutter something to his roommate, and watched him nod and give an “Mm-hmm” in reply before he looked at the screen of Dipper’s phone and tapped once. He held the phone screen-up towards the ceiling, and spoke loudly and clearly. “You’re on speaker, Star.” And Dipper knew he was done for.

_“Dipper!”_ She whined, and Dipper cringed. _“Suck up that sourpuss attitude of yours and kiss your boyfriend already!”_ Bill let out a huff of laughter, quickly covering his mouth with his free hand. This girl was a _hoot_!

“He’s not- Mabel, weren’t not _dating_ , and I am NOT kissing him!” he huffed, crossing his arms. 

They heard Mabel scoff at the other end of the line. _“Hosh-posh, Dippin’ Dots! Why else would he want you to kiss him?”_ Bill frowned. _“I mean, he’s_ obviously _got a crush on you-”_

“Okay, Shooting Star, I think that’s enough-”

_“And you_ obviously _have a crush on him-”_

“Mabel! I do not!”

_“So why don’t you just do it already and,”_ she stopped, her words replaced with very sloppy, very disgusting kissing noises. Both of the males shuddered.

Dipper shook his head, voice strong, “I do _not_ have a crush on him and he does _not_ have a crush on me and I am _not_ going to kiss him!” He took a deep breath. He could see Mabel pouting all the way in California.

_“Boo,”_ she grouched.

Bill whistled, crossing his arms with the phone still in his metal hand. “Harsh, kid.” Dipper shrugged.

Silence enveloped them for a moment before Bill spoke. He held the phone out in front of him again. “Well, as fun as this conversation has been, Shooting Star, I am _beat,_ so I think it’s time to hit the hay. What’da’ya say, Pinetree?” Dipper nodded, moving to sit next to Bill on the edge of his bed _._ He was disappointed that their night was coming to an end, because no matter how annoyed or upset he acted, he did enjoy the ridiculousness that Bill and Mabel brought into their interactions. He longed for it, for the feeling of belonging and being loved and the light feeling in his chest when the joy was just so overwhelmingly heavy in the air. He loved the feeling of normalcy their conversations brought him, like he wasn’t stuck in a facility five hundred miles away from his sister with a guy that had apparently become his best friend but also wanted to kiss him while he struggled to regain a regular life after half of his heart just decided to _die_ , and maybe Dipper _did_ want to kiss Bill, because that was a normal thing to want to do and Dipper was a normal human being and he actually _enjoyed_ Bill’s company and after almost four months he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to living without him because he was _in his life now_.

And Dipper loved it. He loved the way Bill didn’t treat him like fragile glass every moment, loved that he could still have fun with him and have intelligent conversations with him and share his interests — and more than anything, he loved the way Bill looked at him. Not with pity, or sadness, but with hope and joy and a _knowing_ that Dipper was _strong_ and that he would surpass the expectations of the experiment and get to live among the public again in _normalcy_. 

He wished he wasn’t so tired. He wished that he hadn’t had therapy this morning, and then went on a three mile jog after dinner with Bill. He wanted to stay up through the night, talking about nothing with him, just to hear his voice and see him in front of him, because he made him feel like he wasn’t sick. He made him feel like he _belonged_ , and every night he was terrified to go to sleep because he could wake up and it could all be gone, like he was living in a dream and if he woke up he’d never be able to return. But he was exhausted.

_“Oh, okay. Goodnight, Bill. Goodnight, Dip-dop.”_  

“G’night, Mabel,” both males returned simultaneously, and Bill hung up the phone.

Bill leaned across Dipper and tossed his phone on his nightstand with his right arm. Dipper had noticed after about a week that Bill had an image of some type of zodiac on his arm. It looked like it had been carved into the metal. He wondered if it had hurt, if the artificial nerves in the metal were as painful as the nerves in the rest of his body.

They sat quietly for a moment, side by side, shoulders brushing, staring ahead. Dipper swung his feet back and forth, his pinkie touching Bill’s on the edge of the mattress. It was moments like these when Dipper remembered he was still young, still nineteen and still naive, and he figured, _what the hell._ “Hey, Bill?”

“Hmm?” The blonde hummed, and turned his head towards Dipper. He was met with a pair of inexperienced lips on his own,, and he tensed at the unexpected action. It was just a quick peck, a small fraction that left him wanting to pull the other back to him and wrap his arms around him, and he smiled. Dipper didn’t say anything afterwards, staring down at the floor instead, and even with the shadows from his hair shading his face, Bill could see his flushed cheeks. _God,_ the kid was adorable.

He stood, patted Dipper’s untamable brown locks, and walked over to the door to flip the lights off. Dipper had already crawled under his mass of quilts and comforters on his bed by the time Bill made it back to his bed. Bill cuddled under his own blankets, facing the opposite side of the room where Dipper’s bed was. The room fell into silence, the humming of machines in the building the only static sound for ten minutes. He watched the other boy, his eyes closed and his face resting peacefully against his pillow, snuggled under a mound of covers. “Goodnight, Pinetree.” Dipper didn’t respond. He was so exhausted, he was already asleep. “Sweet dreams.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, would you look at that, relationship development! I promise, at some point, we'll get to the angsty stuff. Backstory and character development is pretty much all that's happened so far, and I apologize. I don't want to just jump right in. I hope you enjoyed. The next chapter may or may not be out by next month, because I graduate in twenty five days and I have finals and AP exams and a whole lot of work that needs to be done for school, so I'll try my hardest. Wish me luck!   
> Also, I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors. I tried to go over it, but sometimes I just miss things.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	5. Early Mornings And Complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dipper handles multiple problems all before seven in the morning. He never was a morning person.

“Dipper!” Bill shouted, rummaging through drawers in his dresser. He slammed it shut, his patience growing thin. “Where is my necklace?” Another slam, this time the bottom drawer.

Dipper groaned, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as his roommate moved to tear through his nightstand, probably for the second or third time. “Your what?” he slurred. His mind was still foggy from his slumber, and he was very irritated to have been awoken.

He saw the other male pause his movements and roll his eyes, head tilted at an angle in annoyance. “My necklace, Pinetree, the silver one with the little green charm on it.” He pinched his fingers together in the relative size of the pendant he was referring to, as if that would somehow help Dipper’s not-fully-conscious mind to comprehend what he was saying. When Dipper simply blinked at him and didn’t answer immediately, he dropped his hand and continued searching. Top drawer? _Empty._ Bottom drawer? _Empty._ Cupboard under his bed? _Empty, empty, empty!_

Dipper threw his arm over his forehead, peeking under his elbow at his disruptive roommate, and hummed. “I have no idea.” He pulled his phone off of his nightstand out of habit, waiting for the screen to light up. _5:37 a.m_.. He groaned again and flopped back on his bed. “Bill, it’s five thirty, can’t this wait for at least another hour?” The pajama-clad male ignored his plea and continued to throw clothes. His hair was still wet from his shower the night before. It always did take a while for his hair to dry. He reminded him of Mabel. Her hair took _forever_ to dry.

He had seen him wear the necklace a few times - a dark green spade that hung loosely on a cheap silver chain - but he didn’t wear it often enough for all of this fuss going on. He rubbed his face with a sigh, readjusting the bracelet on his wrist. “Where did you last- _hey_!” he exclaimed, tossing his blanket aside and crawling to the end of his bed to smack Bill’s arm, who had started searching through Dipper’s dresser with an almost angry expression clouding his face. “Dude, what the hell? _Privacy!_ ” He didn’t have anything other than clothes in the dresser, but the thought of someone going through his underwear drawer disturbed him nonetheless.

Bill scoffed, never lifting his eyes from the articles of clothing he was combing through. “You live in a hospital with security cameras in almost every room and you’re never allowed to be left alone unless you’re in the bathroom, and even then I have to wait for you to make sure you don’t fall in.” He shut the top drawer, moving to the next one. “Privacy is not something you have the privilege of, kid.” The corner of his eye caught Dipper’s glare, and he shot him a smirk. He moved to the next drawer. “Go look in the bathroom cabinet.” Dipper rolled his eyes, and when he didn’t make to stand and crossed his arms over his chest, his roommate stiffened, a hard look on his face when he turned his head. “Please,” he grit out, jaw clenched. He heard Dipper sigh, and watched him stand from his bed and head toward the small bathroom at the other side of the room, relaxing his shoulders and resuming his task when he heard the flick of the light switch.

Drawer after drawer, he came up empty. His hands had started to shake, his throat felt tight, and his chest ached as if his heart were crying, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to be his roommate.

In the bathroom, Dipper swung open the mirror, scanning the contents of each shelf carefully with blurry eyes. The white tile was cold on his bare feet; he curled his toes, a disappointed frown crossing his features when the cabinet came up holding only toothpaste and a couple toothbrushes and a few bottles of painkillers and allergy medications that weren’t in the medicine cupboard out in the main room because they were rarely used. He shut the mirror and stepped back to the middle, humming, his hand held against his mouth as he thought. He turned slowly around the room, scanning every corner of the floor and every surface, from the bathtub to the back of the toilet and the counter of the sink. Dropping his hands to his sides, he huffed, moving to pull the shower curtain back to check closer, just in case. 

He heard Bill in the other room slam the last drawer shut, and then another loud _thump_ and with the hissed cursing that followed he quickly came to the assumption that his idiot roommate had kicked something out of frustration.

He checked around the back edge of the tub again, leaning over the tub on one leg and using the wall to keep his balance. He puffed his cheeks out and let out a breath, pushing himself away from the wall, but out of the corner of his eye, the light caught something from the drain. Leaning back over the tub, he hesitantly reached for the object glinting in the artificial lighting of the bathroom, and a victorious smile spread over his lips. A silver chain hung from his fingers, a dirty green spade charm hitching a ride. With a disgusted face (but not as disgusted as he would have been if it had been Mabel’s shower. She shed like a cat in summer. He didn’t understand how her hair was so thick when he could swear at _least_ forty percent of it was in the drain.), he pulled some of the hair off of it and threw it in the trash bin under the sink, then ran the necklace under some cool water to wash off the rest of the grime. He couldn’t really remember when Bill had last worn it, but from the nasty condition it was in, he would guess it been a few days.

Dipper rubbed his thumb gently over the spade, brushing off some residue, and carefully turned it over in his hands. The clasp on the chain had broken (he was lucky he hadn’t lost the charm down the drain when he picked it up). He’d have to get a new one before he could wear it again.

The backside of the pendant gleamed at him, bright silver. He almost over-looked the small engraving on it, worn enough almost to be mistaken for dirt. He turned off the faucet and brought the necklace closer to his face to inspect. It read:

_William Cipher_

_Class of  2015_

He hummed and squinted, running his thumb over the metal again and studying the words closely. Bill had never told Dipper his real name (although the initials _R.B. Cipher_ still plagued his curious mind), but if _B_ stood for Bill, he could only guess that he had either legally changed his middle name, or had simply told Doctor Ford he preferred the name Bill over William. He wasn’t sure which was more believable.

“Did you find it?” Dipper jumped, clutching the necklace to his chest. His roommate’s voice had been tight, strained, hopeful that Dipper had found it because he had combed _every inch_ of the other room, and yet still indifferent enough to blow it off if he had to.

Dipper purposefully ignored the relief that flashed through honey eyes and the way his shoulders visibly relaxed when he nodded and held the necklace out towards him. “It was stuck in the shower drain.” With a frown, Bill carefully pulled it out of Dipper’s fingers, holding the charm in his palm, rubbing over it gently with the thumb of his left hand. “The clasp is broken.” Bill nodded numbly. “It probably fell off when you were in the shower, and you just didn’t notice.”

The blonde held the necklace up in the light to examine it and cursed under his breath at the broken clip. He sighed, balling the necklace up in his hand and slipping it into his pocket. His hands were shaking; he placed them on his hips to hide it.

They were silent for a solid minute, Bill’s eyes intently studying the baseboard around the sink. Dipper sighed out deeply when his pulse tracker beeped, and open and closed his hands a couple of times to ground himself, and only then did his roommate meet his gaze. He blinked, dropping his hands and pulling them behind his back. “You should go take your medicine.” His voice was low, quiet, and if Dipper hadn’t known Bill he would have said he was embarrassed. Dipper watched him turn his back and followed him out, turning out the light when he passed the switch.

The rattling of Dipper’s pill bottle was the only sound in the room as he dumped one into his palm, twisted the cap back on, and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed it dry, grimacing at the taste it left in the back of his throat; metallic, as if he had just swallowed blood. He made a mental note (which he already knew he wouldn’t heed, because he had done the same thing time and time before) to take the pill with a cup of water next time. 

Bill was lying on his bed, arms above his head dangling his necklace in front of him when Dipper turned around. He didn’t seem to notice Dipper watching him as the brunette moved to sit on his own bed and wrapped his quilt around his shoulders. He didn’t look away from the charm until Dipper spoke. “I always assumed Bill was your real middle name.” His voice was soft, like he was talking to an animal, or a small child, and looking back, he guessed that was his first mistake. “Since your initials are R.B..” Bill didn’t answer, intently studying the pendant as he twisted the chain between his fingers. Dipper swallowed thickly. “I’ve never heard of someone legally changing their middle name before. Why did you? I mean, what didn’t you like about it? Why change your middle name instead of just using your first name?” He was asking a lot of questions, personal questions, questions he had no right to ask, questions he knew he wouldn’t get answers to, and completely ignoring the glare his roommate had fixed on him. _Fuck,_ why couldn’t he just _shut up_?

There was no answer, just as he had expected, and Dipper hummed and laid back on his bed, swinging one foot back and forth off the edge and tracing designs in the popcorn ceiling with his eyes. The silence was louder then than it had been the first day he arrived. It was _deafening_. And it lasted too long.

Dipper stared at the patterned carpet on the floor in thought, clutching the quilt tighter around him, swinging his feet back and forth to brush against the carpet. Bill had moved to mirror Dipper’s position on his own bed. His face was expressionless, shoulders tense, eyes exhausted, and maybe if Dipper had looked up before he spoke he would have stopped. But he didn’t.

“I’ll get you another chain.” His roommate shook his head; Dipper didn’t see it. “We can go after breakfast. I’m sure there’s something in that little shop downstairs.” It wasn’t his fault; but he still felt responsible. “I could fix it if we could find another little spring and some tools. Wouldn’t be too hard. Mabel taught me how to do some pretty handy tricks when it comes to jewelry. Didn’t think I’d ever use them, but I guess we got lucky.” Finally, _finally,_ Dipper lifted his head to look at Bill. The blonde was gripping the edge of the bed, knuckles white, head down. He could still see the glint of the necklace in between the fingers on his left hand, pressed against the mattress. Dipper blinked. “Bill? Are, uh…are you okay?”

“ ‘M fine.” Dipper could still see Bill’s hands shaking.

“Are you sure?” He nodded stiffly. Dipper didn’t believe him. 

Dipper had seen his attacks before - snappy attitude, irritable, silently brooding and staring at nothing with glazed-over eyes - but never like this. His facade was usually angry, all hard glares and set jaws and clenched fists, and Dipper never made it through the spell without being yelled at. The first time had been quite a shock for him (he had taken his words to heart, believed that the blonde really meant it when he yelled “you should be dead, because there are a lot of people I would _kill_ to have in your place.” The comment that he was an “ungrateful little _prick_ ” he ignored.), but over the three month time period, Dipper learned to just endure it. It ended quicker that way. 

Dipper stood, letting the blanket around his shoulders fall back to the bed, then walked over to the pantry cupboard and pulled out a bottle of water from the package Dipper used to take his pills. The cabinet squeaked shut as he took a few short steps across the room and stood in front of the other male; he didn’t look up, instead choosing to pick out every detail of Dipper’s socked feet. 

He held the hand not holding the water out, palm up, in front of Bill’s face, and wiggled his fingers to get his attention. He watched patiently as he lifted his head and glared at Dipper’s hand, then his face. If looks could kill, Dipper would’ve been dead. Three months ago.

He wiggled his fingers again. “Necklace.” It was not a question, or a suggestion, but a demand, sharp and cold — and underneath, caring. Bill growled, narrowing his eyes and mumbling something Dipper didn’t care to decipher, then reluctantly dropped the necklace into his palm. Dipper closed his fingers around it tightly before handing him the bottle of water.

 “Do you have any medicine?” Bill shook his head, limply holding the bottle in his lap. Dipper rolled his eyes and walked back to the pantry (they should just call it the medicine cabinet, because that’s really all it held other than the water and emergency snack bars.). He skimmed over the labels, pushing some in the front out of the way to get to the ones in the back, and frowned when he failed to find Bill’s prescription. He hummed. “You haven’t taken it since last week, how can you be out?” 

Bill was staring at him when he turned around, expressionless, shoulders slumped, and when he spoke his voice was small, defeated. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I haven’t taken them because I haven’t had them?” Dipper knew it was intended to sound threatening, imagined that at any other point it would be accompanied with a glare that would freeze him to his spot, but now he just sounded so…weak. Beaten. But he did not pity him.

Morning light shone through the pulled blinds at the window, throwing ominous shadows across Bill’s face. His eyes were dark, and Dipper wondered if it was from the weird angle the light was hitting him or a lack of sleep. He was concerned - had been since the second week when he woke up at two in the morning and found him still awake in his bed - but it never seemed to hinder his physical capabilities, so he never questioned him about it (and he knew that Bill’s large ego would prevent him from admitting that he had a problem even if he did bring it up, and Dipper would only be talking to a wall).

Dipper took another quick glance around the room, away from the skeletal figure on the bed that was still staring blankly at him. He looked thinner than normal, but Bill’s metabolism was as high as his ego (and Dipper’s was about the same), and they hadn’t had much of a chance to eat the last few days. Dipper guessed he had probably lost a bit of weight, too, but it was nothing to be concerned about. 

He shook his head. “If you were out you would’ve told me.” he stated. “We had a deal. And I know you don’t break deals.” Dipper didn’t know that Bill even _had_ medication until after his first attack, and he had made him agree that if he was going to be taking care of Dipper, Dipper was going to make sure he was taking care of himself as well. He had really slacked off on his part lately.

He shot a glance around the room, searching for potential hiding spots, and set his hands on his hips. “Are you hiding it?” He questioned, returning his gaze to the other to catch any tell-tale signs of lying.

The blonde rolled his eyes. Dipper noticed him turning the bottle in his hands slowly, his fingers brushing over the divots in the design of the plastic. He was using it to ground himself, Dipper realized. “Why would I do that, kid?” Bill defended, and Dipper was happy to hear the edge creep back into his voice. He knew how to deal with the screaming. 

Bill’s hands twitched with the urge to cross them over his chest, but he kept them in his lap, the water in the bottle shifting as he tilted it forward, and back, and forward again.

“You don’t think you need it.” Dipper responded. His voice was calm; it was enraging for his roommate. He squeezed the bottle. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with you-”

“There _isn’t._ ” Jaw clenched, plastic crushed, water dripping onto the floor.

“So maybe it isn’t a _big_ problem, but you can’t just… _ignore_ it. You’ll make it worse-”

“My life can’t _get_ any worse, Pinetree!” His eyes were burning, hands closed in tight fists, bottle discarded to the floor. Dipper’s eyes lazily studied him from the middle of the room, and _God,_ if he didn’t react _somehow,_ he was going to _wring his fucking neck._ “What’s the point? If I’m just going to die anyway why would I try to _fix myself_?” He laughed hysterically, hands pulling at his blonde hair. He was _seething._ “I _hate_ being forced to stay in here, like some _caged zoo animal_ on display! It’s _their_ fault I’m like this! I am not a _person_ anymore, Dipper! I’m just a dumb, failed science experiment that they pity too much to get rid of!” Bill’s hands were shaking violently, eyes flitting around the room, breathing heavy and chopped from his warped chuckle. 

The giggling was the worst part. He didn’t sound… _human._

Dipper suppressed a shudder. “That’s not tr-”

“It IS true! I’m only here because I have _nowhere else to go!”_ He threw a pillow at Dipper’s face, and he watched it land soundlessly at his feet. _Could’ve been worse,_ he guessed _._ “You don’t know ANYTHING about me! So stop pretending like you can make this _better,_ because newsflash, kid, you fucking _can’t_.”

“Bill-” he was cut short by his own yelp, covering his head as he dodged away from a book Bill had found next to his bed. He may have been left-handed, but what his right lacked in accuracy it made up for in strength. 

He threw another one. Dipper ducked out of the way. “Stop!” he shouted at him, eyes blown wide as he jumped away from another. Pages crunched as it hit the ground. The next one was paperback, _thank god,_ and got him right on the shoulder. He let out a cry and brought his hand up to cradle his arm; it didn’t hurt, not as much as one of the hardbacks would have, but _holy shit,_ was he shocked. Bill had never thrown things at him before. Things had never been _this bad._

“Would you just-” another book, this one knocking knick-knacks off the top of his dresser, filling the room with a sickening _crash_ that dropped the pit of his stomach. “Listen!” Dipper ducked again and _woah, okay,_ that was _not_ a book. “ _Goddamnit_ , just-” 

Bill jumped up, hands pulling at his blonde hair, his eyes wild and body shaking. “Just _shut up!_ ” He huffed a laugh, his mouth curled upwards in a deranged grin. The sight of him was unnerving. “Keep your fucking mouth SHUT!” The blonde kicked one of the hardback books lying on the floor at Dipper, then swiped his arm across his nightstand in one quick, strong motion that sent everything clattering to the floor. He wished, he hoped, _god,_ he’d fucking _pray_ if it would get the kid to just _shut his goddamn mouth_ for _once-_

“ _William Cipher!_ ”

He froze. 

His shoulders tensed, sucking in a gasp, and if Dipper heard the guttural cry that escaped his throat, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Look at me, Will-”

“Don’t call me that.” Bill mumbled, arms hanging limp at his sides now, the fringe of his yellow hair covering his eyes as he continued glaring at the ground. His eyes were burning. He blinked to make it stop.

Dipper strained to hear his roommate, instinctively leaning forward, eyes narrowed in concentration. “What?” 

“I said don’t CALL ME THAT!” Bill growled, an animalistic, hoarse rumble, and he snapped his head up in Dipper’s direction. He stood his ground, eyes sharp at Dipper’s own expression of shock, and if he was proud to say that he was strong enough to keep it together an extra thirty seconds, well, Dipper didn’t need to know.

His eyes were red-rimmed, stinging from holding back tears. His adam’s apple bobbed in his throat when he swallowed.

There was a knock on the door — three hesitant, concerned knocks that made Dipper stop his steps over to Bill. Only one pair of eyes turned to the door. “Hey, uh, Dipper? Is…is everything alright in there?” Dipper recognized the voice, apprehensive and quiet, of their neighboring dorm’s occupant. Charley, Dipper thought his name was.

With one worried glance over his shoulder at his roommate, Dipper made his way to the door, hand twisting open the knob just as another knock sounded. He only cracked the door, pressing his body into the opening to cover the room behind him, and Bill, who had collapsed to his knees with his hair covering his eyes as soon as Dipper had turned his back to him. 

Charley blinked in surprise before lowering his hand from where it was prepared to knock again, and for a moment the two males just stared at each other. Charley’s hair was still tousled from sleep, his eyes dull, faded green _Oregon Crusaders 2015_ T-shirt wrinkled, and his black shorts hitched up high enough for his knee brace to sit comfortably. Charley was one of many with a leg prosthetic, starting half-way down his left thigh. He was in stage two of his recovery now, finally capable of walking on his own with only the assistance of his velcro brace that helped his mech support his weight. Dipper noticed the straps had been sloppily tightened, and guilt worked its way into his chest as he realized that, not only had he woken him before six in the morning, but he had worried him enough to make him rush himself to get to their dorm to make sure they were alright. 

Dipper swallowed and forced a smile, trying to keep his body in the way of Charley’s view of the room because it was an absolute _wreck_ and anyone who saw even a _speck of hair_ out of place on Cipher’s head would know something was up. Dipper was shorter than Charley, but that didn’t stop him from standing on his toes to block his view. He cleared his throat to pull the other male’s attention down to him. “Hey- hey, Charley, didn’t mean to wake you. Everything’s fine here. Thanks for checking in, though, nice to know you care.” He shot the other a reassuring smile that the other didn’t return. 

Charley frowned at him. “You sure?” He looked up over Dipper’s head, “I heard a lot of yelling.” Dipper pulled the door further shut and let out a nervous laugh. 

“Ah, yeah, no, uh, we were just- just had a little misunderstanding. It’s fine, really.”

The other male shifted his weight, looking unconvinced. Dipper watched his brow crease with uncertainty, a small, seemingly permanent line sewn onto his forehead from anxiety. “Oh, uh…okay.” Dipper smiled again and nodded. “If you’re sure-“

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Thanks, Charley.” Dipper watched a flash of something in the other’s blue eyes before he nodded his head once, and Dipper shut the door and turned back to the room as soon as the other had turned his back to him.

Bill hadn’t moved from the floor. His hands were lying limp, palm up, next to his thighs. Dipper swallowed. He wished he would start screaming again. 

Dipper knelt down next to him. He didn’t touch him. “Where’s your medicine, Bill?” He kept his voice quiet, low, to keep from frightening him. He doubted he’d have much of a reaction now, though. He’d hit his draining point.

Bill dragged his mechanical arm across the floor as if it suddenly weighed two hundred pounds before he lifted it and pointed one finger at his dresser. His head never moved. Dipper’s eyes trailed his hand and the direction his roommate was pointing before he pushed himself up off the floor and took four soft steps over to the dresser. He didn’t ask which drawer it was in as Bill dropped his heavy arm back to his side, and instead searched through each drawer quietly. He started from the top, and worked his way down, down to the third drawer. He pushed sweatpants and pajama bottoms out of the way, and found Bill’s orange prescription bottle tucked away in the back. Dipper shook the bottle to check if there were any pills left, and relief flooded his system at the rattling.

He turned back to the form on the floor. “Will you take it?” He received a slow, heavy nod in response. 

Dipper unscrewed the cap of the bottle and dumped one pill into his palm before setting the prescription on top of his dresser and kneeling down to hand it to Bill, who took it without argument. “Do you want water?” He nodded again, and Dipper got him another bottle of water and handed it to him. Bill twisted the cap off and swallow the pill with one gulp before he handed it back to Dipper.

When he continued to sit in silence, Dipper set his water on his nightstand and began the tedious task of cleaning the mess. He carefully folded all of the clothes Bill had tossed to the floor in his haste and set them back in their respected draws, took a towel from the hamper in the bathroom and threw it over the spot on the carpet where Bill had dumped his first water bottle, and rearranged all the trinkets on top of his own dresser that had been knocked askew by one of the books Bill had thrown at his head. 

It had shattered the glass bowl that was setting in the center. He never was fond of the orange-swirled bowl (he only kept his keys in it just so he wouldn’t lose them), but Mabel had made it for him when they were still sophomores in high school. He sighed as he brushed the pieces into his hand and dumped them in the trash. It really wasn’t much - and quite frankly he was _relieved_ that Mabel would have to make another one now - but that didn’t stop him from being upset.

Dipper was patting the carpet with the towel when Bill finally lifted his head to look at him. “You weren’t the first one, you know,” Dipper heard him swallow, “to be my roommate.” The brunette didn’t look up when he spoke, continuing to dab the water up off the carpet. Most of it had soaked in by now, but it was still a bit damp.

It wasn’t uncommon for him to start conversations like this after an attack. In fact, Dipper had heard that particular sentence about six different times in the past three months. He nodded. “I know.” Bill only stared at him.

“You weren’t the first one.” Dipper nodded again. “You weren’t the first.” He repeated it, over and over, his voice getting smaller each time. If Dipper were looking at him, he would have seen the guilt in his eyes. If he were looking, he would have seen the way his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water between each sentence. If he were looking, he would have noticed how he wanted to say something else, until he fell quiet again, watching Dipper finish cleaning up the water and pick up the mutilated bottle. His eyes trailed the way the brunette’s body moved as he stood and dusted his hands off on his pajama pants. He tossed the towel into the hamper in the bathroom and the crushed bottle in the small trashcan under the sink, then returned to stand in front of his roommate. 

He ran a hand through his messy hair, tugging on a tangle, and sighed before he looked down at Bill, his faded red shirt wrinkled and sweat pants revealing his ankles from the position he sat in. “Well, what do you say we get ready and head down for breakfast? All of this has made me pretty hungry.” Dipper gave him a half smile, and Bill blinked at him, hesitantly taking the other man’s offered hands to help him stand.

For a very quick moment, Dipper’s smile faltered. His eyes flicked to his left wrist right as Bill turned away from him, presumably to grab his hairbrush because he’s “not going anywhere with anyone looking like _that_ ,” and he quickly slipped his pulse tracker off his arm before it could speak. He tossed it onto the quilts on his bed, eager to keep Bill’s mood up now that he was speaking. He knew the medicine hadn’t settled quite yet, but he was happy to hear his arrogant attitude back in his voice. “Get changed, Pinetree, I’m not going to let you ruin my work just because you have to change your shirt.”

Dipper slipped on jeans and a T-shirt and sat on his bed as Bill changed out of his own pajamas before he got to work on Dipper’s hair. He was not gentle, and laughed every time Dipper muttered an “ouch”. It was annoying, _god_ it may have been the worst sound he’d ever experienced, but he no longer hated it. In the absence of Mabel, this had become his new sound of joy. Demented, maybe slightly, but it was joy nonetheless.

“ _Ow,_ Jesus, fuck, Bill! What the hell?” He swatted Bill’s hands away from his head with a glare. “Careful.” He began to smooth down his hair himself, but quickly had his hands pulled away with a long string of scoldings. 

Dipper huffed as Bill touched up a place he had messed up. “No touching, Pinetree. You’ll ruin it.” He stood back to examine his work, then, with a nod of satisfaction, he slipped on his shoes and both of the males began to make their way down to breakfast.

“So, I was thinking we should sneak some ice cream after dinner tonight.” Bill proposed.

Dipper laughed at the elbowed gesture he received, skipping down the stairs. “Bill, you know I’m not supposed to have- _shoot_.” He stopped, three steps from the bottom, and Bill turned to face him from the floor. “I left my bracelet in our room.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, and at Bill’s reluctant gaze, he continued, “I’ll be gone two minutes, tops. Grab me a muffin or something and get us a seat.” Bill didn’t move as Dipper took one step back up. “I’ll be back before you can say pine tree.” And he turned and booked it back up the stairs, fishing his room key out of his pocket.

He was out of breath by the time he reached their room. Maybe he shouldn’t have ran before he ate to replenish his energy. 

He left the door open, planning to stay no longer than it took to find his pulse tracker in the sea of quilts. His _Shockwave_ jumped on the way over to his bed, and he coughed a couple of times to get it back on track. With narrowed eyes, he threw blanket after blanket onto the floor. It was like the bracelet had _sunk_ into the sheets. But it was there somewhere, he knew, because that’s where he put it.

His heart stuttered again, and he coughed again, and he coughed, and he coughed, but this time it didn’t set back. He felt the pulse tracker under his fingertips, and eagerly clipped it tightly to his wrist. One shock, two shocks, and he could breathe again. He sighed. 

The glimmer of Bill’s necklace sitting on his nightstand caught his eye, and he decided he would bring it down to him. He grabbed it and headed for the door. And froze.

His pulse tracker screamed. He felt the burn of electric and the cool of the metal clutched in his palm. He stood, staring at the empty, open doorway, and he wondered why he wasn’t moving. He wondered why he wasn’t taking Bill his necklace when it obviously meant so much to him, wondered why he felt like he was stuck, why he couldn’t walk. He wondered for a few seconds.

And then he realized he couldn’t breathe. 

He gasped, clutched at his chest, his eyes widened. His knees collapsed under him. He stopped feeling the shocks, couldn’t hear the solid, constant tone of his heartbeat from his pulse tracker. His thoughts all blurred together. He didn’t notice the footsteps in the hall, or his eyelids heavily falling shut, or how ragged his breathes had become, lungs desperate for air. He didn’t know someone was calling for him, that someone was holding him. He didn’t know he had lost consciousness. He didn’t know _so much_. But he knew he should be terrified. 

His _Shockwave_ had stopped beating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I regret nothing.
> 
> Okay, so in three days I have to turn in my computer because this is a school laptop, so I won't be able to continue writing until I get my new computer for my graduation gift. Graduation is also two weeks away and I still have SO MUCH to do. I will be very busy in the next couple of weeks. It is also fifteen minutes until midnight and the last one thousand words or so were not very thoroughly edited. I apologize for any mistakes, and would appreciate it if you would comment if you see any! These chapters just keep getting longer and- ugh.  
> Also WE'VE REACHED 700 HITS WOO! I'M SO EXCITED! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated and constructive criticism is encouraged! I hope you enjoyed reading!


	6. Interactions and Too Many 'Maybe's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill copes.

He had meant to fall asleep. He thought taking a quick nap would help pass the time, but he ended up just lying in his bed with the covers pulled over his head because he couldn’t stop staring at Dipper’s bed. It was empty. It had been empty all day. _He_ _couldn’t stop staring_.

He swallowed. His throat was scratchy and sore from screaming. He’d followed them, the paramedics, leading Dipper’s stretcher through the halls and out of the residential ward towards the medical wing. People turned their heads at the scene he was making, yelling and throwing his hands around. He remembered someone had tried to keep him from following the nurses into the medical wing, had grabbed his arm and tried to keep him in the hall while the door locked. He couldn't really remember if he had punched him or bitten him - probably both, from the throbbing of his left hand (he wished he would’ve used his mechanical arm. It would’ve done more damage.) and the metallic taste of someone else’s blood in his mouth - but he had slipped through the door right before it sealed shut. He couldn’t get past the sterilization chamber without a suit, and despite his struggle with one of the unlucky scientists that happened to be within his reach, he was wrestled down and escorted back to the living halls. He may have bitten one of _them,_ actually, now that he thought about it. He couldn’t have punched them with handcuffs on.

They’d locked him in his room after that, and stationed a guard outside his door, so that even is he _could_ pick the lock (which he most definitely could, without any doubt whatsoever), he still wouldn’t be going anywhere. He was surprised, really, by how fast everything had happened. He’d restarted Dipper’s heart with the small defibrillator under the brunette’s bed after he found him. The emergency setting on his pulse tracker had already alerted Doctor Ford and the other medical staff to Dipper’s condition. When the staff made it up to their room, Dipper was still unconscious with a faint, but very real, pulse, and Bill was shaking uncontrollably for the second time that morning. Ford didn’t show up to get Dipper; he had sent two of the counselors from downstairs, and they met three nurses in the lobby right out of the elevator. 

And it infuriated Bill.

_All of this_ was Ford’s fault. _Everything_ that he had done for their ‘ _well-being’_ only lead to more destruction, more _pain_ , and Bill was _sick of it._ He was sick of being lied to, of watching _others_ being lied to and of lying to others himself. He wanted show Ford what he had done, what monstrosity he had created for the _‘greater good’_ that was causing more problems than fixing them. He wanted Ford to pay for what he had done, for trying to play God, robbing Death of its victims by curing deadly diseases and injured lungs and livers and kidneys and _hearts_. He wanted to scream in his face at his stupid decision to continue the trial after his first failure, and give him just as much pain as he had endured the past year, because maybe if he saw what he had done to him, what he had done to _Dipper_ , he would find the decency to _stop._

_But he didn’t even show up._

His own _nephew_ , for _fuck’s sake!_ Dipper should have been dead MONTHS ago, but for his own research he had put the kid through _hell_ as if he were a random stranger he’d met on the streets and didn’t care for. He _knew_ what was going to happen. He _knew_ it was going to end the same way the first trial had ended, but he did it anyway. The man was _sickening._

Bill’s jaw clenched in anger, and with a deep breath, he tossed the blanket to the side and sat up. He did his best to avert his eyes from his roommate’s bed, and ignored the now-dried tear stains on his cheeks. His eyes still burned and his hair was tousled beyond saving and his face felt crusty from crying. He really needed a shower. Some fresh air. Maybe something to drink to soothe his throat. But his guilt kept him from moving from that spot on his bed. Dipper probably wouldn’t get any of those things again, and maybe if Bill had _done something,_ maybe if he’d just _stayed_ with the kid like he was supposed to, he’d be alright. If Dipper lived, he was _never_ going to leave him again.

Dipper had been in surgery for the past six hours. He couldn’t care less, of course; Dipper was only his roommate that he’d gotten stuck with for the past few months. Nothing more. No matter the outcome, it didn’t matter to Bill. He’s not the one that would be paying for the funeral this time. 

There was a noise in the room, then. It echoed on the walls in the silence; it was foreign to his ears. Again, he heard it, like a kitten’s whine for its mother or siblings. He thought maybe there was something under his bed.

The third time it sounded, he shut his eyes. He bit his lip, and the sound was muffled. He dug his dull nails into his thighs and pulled his knees up to his chest and then he knew it was _him_  that he was hearing. He sobbed, and hiccuped, and sniffled, and when he wiped at his face his sleeve came away wet with salty tears and snot. He disgusted himself; a grown man, crying alone in his bedroom as if he were some petty teenager who wouldn’t get over a break up. 

But that was it, though. This wasn’t just _his_ bedroom, it was Dipper’s, too. And he wasn’t dealing with some half-assed immature relationship, this was someone’s _life._ Someone was fighting against an issue that could end their entire _existence_. And that someone — Dipper…Dipper was fighting alone.

Bill rubbed his nose, eyes heavy-lidded as his crying stopped, and he frowned. He frowned, and glared at the door and the man on the other side. He should be there, be _close_ , at least, but he was stuck here. Dipper was going against Death, a boss battle Bill would immediately surrender himself to if he were in Dipper’s situation, and he was _trying_. He was fighting all alone, while Bill just sat on his ass and moped. Dipper was so much stronger than he was. Maybe if he hadn’t acted out, if he’d just _behaved_ like a normal human being, he’d be sitting down in one of those plastic, uncomfortable chairs in the hall outside of the ER waiting for him. He needed to _be there_ with him and he wasn’t. He wanted to be the first thing he saw if he woke up. And he was more than a little terrified that he wouldn’t.

His phone started ringing then, and he lazily turned to it sitting on his nightstand. He didn’t recognize the ringtone - high-pitched, pop-y, comparable to upbeat elevator music - but he had been known to do things he didn't remember. Who knew what he did when he was out? 

He picked his phone up in his left hand and stared at it for a moment. The ringing and odd music continued, but his phone in his hand stayed dark. He cringed when it rang again. He peeked one eye open and slowly looked over towards Dipper’s bed, and there, still sitting on his nightstand, was Dipper’s phone, lit up with Shooting Star’s beautifully smiling face. His stomach dropped.

His phone fell from his hands, his body tense as he stared across the room with wide eyes. He sat, still, until it went silent a few seconds later. With a sigh, he ran a shaking hand through his unkempt blonde hair and fell back against his pillow. _Fuck,_ what was he supposed to tell his sister? Why did _he_ have to tell her? _Oh God,_ if Bill thought _he_ was upset over this, Dipper’s sister was going to be… if he didn’t wake up she’d be…so much worse than him. He rubbed his eyes.

For a moment, he actually thought he’d be able to drift off. Maybe he’d be able to pass some time, maybe when he woke up he’d be able to go and see Dipper and he’d be perfectly fine and if he had to endure nightmares to get that to come faster, he’d knock himself over the head with no hesitation. 

Then Dipper’s phone began to ring again. He sucked in a sharp breath, sitting up quicker than the light of the sun travels to the ground. He swallowed thickly as it buzzed and played that awful song again and stood up, taking three short strides to Dipper’s nightstand and picking up his phone. He took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair, took another breath, and brought the phone slowly up to his face, and- it stopped ringing again. 

He let out a strangled, relieved cry, sinking down onto Dipper’s mattress. His bed was still unmade, and down underneath Bill’s layers of grief his neat-freak sense itched at his mind, but he was too distracted by his need to breath to pay it any attention. Lying back in the bed, he threw his mechanical arm over his eyes, the other still clutching Dipper’s phone, and let out a nervous chuckle. His torso shook with the laughter, his feet swinging over the edge of the bed. “You dodged a bullet, Cipher.” He smiled. 

And Dipper’s phone rang again.

“God- what- are you _kidding_ me?” He growled, sitting up and looking at the caller ID on the phone. _Mabel Pines._ He rubbed his face and took a long, deep breath before he hit the _accept_ button and brought the phone to his ear. “Dipper Pines’ phone, Bill Cipher speaking.” He answered.

_“Bill?”_ He could hear the surprise in her voice. _“Oh, uh, hey. How, uh, how’s things over there? Why didn’t you pick up the first two times? Where’s Dipper?”_

“Woah, hey, Star, slow down, slow down okay? I couldn’t find Dipper’s phone.” He lied. “Do you know how messy the kid is? Even _I_ can’t keep up with his mayhem.” He slipped in a fake laugh at the end of the sentence to help sell it. He hoped to every sentient being she couldn’t see through it.

He heard shuffling on the other end of the line. _“Oh, yeah, he’s…he’s pretty unorganized, um, where is he?”_ Bill swallowed. _“Bill? Hello?”_ He felt his heart drop, and suddenly it was hard for him to breath. _“Bill? Are you still there? Are you okay?”_

“Um,” his voice cracked on the syllable; he cleared his throat. “Yeah, yeah I’m good, Star.”

_“Great, great…where’s Dipper?”_ She was tired of him dodging the question. She had a bad feeling in her stomach and she needed to talk to him. Now.

“He’s uh…he’s downstairs.” _Technically not a lie._

_“Downstairs? You’re not with him? Aren’t you supposed to ALWAYS be with him? Like, ‘be-as-annoying-as-possible-and-never-leave-him-alone’ always?”_ He could hear the panic in her tone — and the anger.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, then a long exhale out. “You are correct.” There was more shuffling, and he imagined her moving to sit at the edge of her bed in her house. She’d called last week and told Dipper that she had successfully passed her freshman year of college and was now back at the home she shared with her parents in Piedmont. He wondered if it was as quiet there as it was in his own room without Dipper, even if she had parents filling in some of the gaps. 

There was silence for a moment. Bill had no clue what he was going to tell her, and Mabel, the poor soul, was giving him time to think something up. But eventually, she’d had enough silence. _“Well?_

Bill sighed, using his prosthetic arm to rub his eyes and face. “Look, Star, I really don’t think I’m the one that should be telling you-”

_“You listen hear, Cipher. Someone called my parents ten minutes ago. I wasn’t allowed to listen. My father just walked out of our house without a single word to me and my mother is sitting at our dining room table in hysterics and hasn’t stopped crying since they answered the phone. No one is telling me what’s going on, I’ve got a really bad feeling in my stomach that makes me feel like I’m going to throw up, and if someone doesn’t explain SOMETHING to me right now I am getting in my car and driving up there myself.”_ Bill heard her take a deep breath, and the faint creak of her bed as she sat back down after her rage. Her voice cracked when she spoke again, and Bill, wide-eyed and shocked, could do nothing but listen to her. _“Please, Bill, if you have any idea what’s going on right now, I need to know.”_ On some microscopic level, Bill knew exactly what she was going through right then. _“What happened to Dipper?”_

Bill swallowed the lump in his throat. “Star, I-”

_“Please…please. I have to know.”_ She pleaded, begged. A tear rolled down her cheek, but she wiped it away. She needed to be strong now, for Dipper. 

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Mabel sat patiently in her bedroom; she knew how hard it must be to tell your roommate’s sister he wasn’t okay, and Bill was swirling words around in his head, trying to rehearse _something_ that wouldn’t make the situation sound hopeless. “Okay,” he finally began, and heard Mabel’s sigh of relieve at the other end, “okay, I’ll tell you.” He paused. He still had absolutely _no idea_ what he was going to tell her. The truth was grim, and if he were being honest with himself he was fairly certain Dipper wasn’t going to make it through the transplant. 

He needed a whole new _Shockwave._ Just like open-heart surgery, no quick laser fixes or micro-organic radiological technology they used in place of surgeries in ordinary hospitals.This had to be done the old fashioned way. It wasn’t something that they could just…snip a wire and make everything better. The machine had reached its lifespan, and had no more juice for him. Bill was lucky there was still anything left for him when he restarted it before the paramedics arrived. He wasn’t sure how long it kept beating, but even a few minutes could save his life, he knew.

Bill pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his right arm around his knees, propping his back against the wall on Dipper’s bed. If he was going into this, he might as well get comfy. 

He cut right to the chase. “Dipper is in the ER.”

_“Why?”_ There was no surprised _‘what?!’_ like he had expected, but that was because she already knew. He knew she already knew.

“This morning, he had his pulse tracker off - don't ask me _why_ because I don’t know, it was on one minute and then we started down to breakfast and it wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know what made him remember that he had taken it off, but he stopped right before we got to the cafeteria. He…he told me he’d be right back, he told me to get something to eat and sit down and he’d be right back, but he wasn’t. 

“I didn’t move, of course. I just…watched him leave, with a _disgusting_ nausea that I just assumed was from being up early and not eating anything.” He swallowed and grit his teeth. Mabel didn’t interrupt. “I should’ve went with him, I shouldn’t have let him go alone, I should have went with him just like I did the first day. Or, or watched closer, made sure he had his bracelet on before we even left the room. But I didn’t. I’m sorry.” He was crying again _._ _God,_ he was so sick of crying. 

“When I found him, the door was still open and he was on the floor. His _Shockwave_ flatlined. I…I managed to get it beating again, for a couple minutes at least, but he didn’t wake up, and then the paramedics took him to the hospital wing and I got locked in our room - I’m so sorry, Mabel.” 

Mabel was in no mood to play comforter. Sure, she was empathetic, but she was dealing with her own pain then, too. _“Is he still alive?”_

Bill took a moment to compose himself, blinking the tears out of his eyes and digging his artificial fingernails into his thigh to distract himself. “Yeah, yeah, last I heard he was still in surgery. But he’s been in surgery a long time, Mabel.”

She nodded, despite the fact that Bill couldn’t see her. _“He’s going to be fine.”_ He wished he could be so optimistic.

Bill could hear shuffling on the other end, and then what sounded like something heavy falling to the floor. “ _Jesus,_ are you alright?” The girl hummed an affirmative in response. “What are you doing?”

_“I’m coming to see him.”_ She immediately replied, and all the blood drained from Bill’s face.

“What? Kid, that’s a ten hour drive straight through. It’s already one o’clock, it’ll be _extremely_ late by the time you get here- what if you get tired on the way up, or some drunk-y hits you at eleven thirty at night or-"

_“Then I’ll rent a hotel room when I’m about halfway there and drive the rest tomorrow.”_

He shook his head, a fruitless tactic over a voice call. “That means you won’t get here until way later tomorrow. Shooting Star, you know he might not have enough strength to-”

_“Well then, Cipher, I suggest you get that sorry ass of yours out of that room and down to Dipper so you can give him what he needs until I get there.”_ Bill blinked. _“He will be alive when I get there. I know he will.”_ He heard the sound of keys jingling, then the roar of an engine. _“Keep Dipper’s phone on you, I don’t have your number.”_ And the phone beeped as she ended the call.

He growled. “Damnit, Shooting Star, your brother’s going to kill me.” He tossed Dipper’s phone onto the bed, and let his body slide down to the floor, his shirt riding halfway up his torso uncomfortably. “If he isn't dead already.” he muttered.

The silence was suffocating. His ears buzzed, his eyes wouldn’t stay focused on one object, and his whole body thrummed with the quiet humming of the organic reactor downstairs powering the facility. He could _feel_ the vibrations of the machine with the over-sensitive tactile nerves in his mechanical arm. It drove him crazy. Quite literally, in fact, the first time.

He tapped his fingers against the floor as he lazily glanced around his room. For the next five minutes he sat, and he wasn’t sure if setting against Dipper’s bed was helping him or making his guilt worse. He wasn’t staring over at nothing anymore; he considered that a plus.

He was mentally rehearsing his latin (he had a few choice words for someone that he definitely could _not_ say in english) when there was a knock on the door. Lying sprawled out on the floor, he turned his head to frown at the door. “I’d say ‘come in’ but the door is locked.” He snickered. “Hope you have the key, ‘cause I don’t.” He heard a _click_ as the lock was turned, and sat up, eyebrow raised in curiosity. He hadn’t planned on being let out today.

The light from the hallway had him covering his eyes, blinding after sitting in a dark room for hours, and left him wondering who had stepped in as the door fell shut again. “Cipher, how are you?”

Bill rolled his eyes and flopped back down onto the floor as he recognized the voice. “Oh, I’m doing _just fine,_ Fordsy. Being locked in my room with nothing to eat for six hours is just _dandy.”_ He responded.

He heard the doctor sigh, and could picture him running a hand down his face. He continued staring blankly at the ceiling. “I know you aren’t very fond of me, and I’m the last person you’d want to speak to in a situation like this.”

Bill huffed. “THAT’S an understatement,” he mumbled. Stanford pretended not to notice.

“But, I have a couple of questions to ask you,” Bill rolled his eyes, “and I need you to answer honestly.” Stanford went to sit on Bill’s bed, and the blonde crossed his arms over his chest. “First,” he grunted as he sat, popping his back, “I need you to tell me what happened.”

The younger man rolled his eyes again. “Your _amazing_ dumb device stopped working. Congratulations, Sixer, you’ve killed your nephew.”

“Dipper is not dead.”

He shot a glare towards the closet. “Not yet.”

He heard another sigh above him. “The _Shockwave_ was never meant to be a long-term solution, we were _prepared_ for this-”

“ _Prepared?_ ” He interrupted, sitting up and turning his body around to face his bed where the other sat. “How could you _possibly_ be prepared for someone to _die_?” He shouted.

Stanford rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “We’ve been over this, Bill, we knew the lifespan of the device and we were prepared to take Dipper into surgery to replace the heart after the third month.”

“You should’ve done it _before_ Dipper’s heart stopped.” Bill’s eyes narrowed in a glare.

There was a huff from the elder as he stood to tower over the boy on the floor. “Bill Cipher, I have done _everything_ in my power to keep that boy safe and happy. Dipper is _not_ dead.”

“His heart stopped.”

“But it’s _beating_ now, Bill, Dipper is _fine_ , and it’s all because of your brother-”

“Don’t you _dare_ bring my brother into this!” Bill finally stood, his tall, lanky body bringing him within an inch of Sixer’s height. “You have _no right_ to talk about him.” His eyes _burned_ with hatred, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, nose to nose with the other man before he shoved him. He didn’t move more than a couple of inches, but Ford’s patience were running thin. 

Stanford dusted invisible dirt off his lab coat. “Your brother gave us information and it’s because of him that Dipper is still alive.” He struggled to keep his voice level.

“Dipper should be dead.” Bill turned away, arms crossed, but he made sure he didn’t mumble. He gathered no response, just a cold stare. “You’re not saving him. You’re hurting him.” Ford opened his mouth to respond, but Bill cut him off. He didn’t deserve a chance to defend himself. “He’s alive, but he’s not happy, and you know it. He _hates_ being stuck inside all the time. If you knew ANYTHING about him, you would know that. Dipper is not _living,_ Sixer. He’s just…alive.” Bill turned away from Stanford and snatched Dipper’s phone off of his bed, then picked up his own from his nightstand. “He should have died the _first_ time his heart stopped.”

If he listened close enough, he could almost hear the low growl coming from the grey-haired man behind him now as he stepped towards the door. “Where do you think you’re going, Cipher? We aren’t done here.” His jaw was clenched; Bill’s smirk made its way back to his face. 

He glanced back to him, one hand on the door knob and the other slipping Dipper’s phone into his back pocket. “Pinetree is out of surgery, yes?”

Stanford rolled his eyes in a childish gesture. “If Dipper wasn’t, I sure as hell wouldn’t be wasting my time here.”

Bill gasped and put his metal hand over his heart in mock offense. “Language, Fordsy!” He snickered. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to go visit him.”

“He’s not awake yet.” Bill shrugged, twisting the knob. “He may not wake up _at all_. You understand that, don’t you?” Stanford took a small step forward. Bill’s shoulders stiffened, and if he didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was going to _comfort_ him. “His body his under a lot of stress right now. He took to the transplant much more quickly than the first time, but there’s always the risk of his body rejecting him without the proper support.” He set a hand on the blonde’s shoulder. “You know that.”

Bill brushed his arm away and shot him a glare. “That isn’t how he died, and _you_ know that.” He swallowed the lump in his throat, “Dipper’s going to be fine.” He pulled the door open.

“You don’t know that.” Bill’s eyes lit up with a smile on his face, shooting a glance back at the elder.

“I do, actually,” he took one step out the door, “because Mabel told me so.” And he shut it, leaving Stanford standing alone in the middle of their room. He took a deep breath to calm his trembling hands (when had he started shaking?), and with a tip of his imaginary hat to the officers outside his door, he made his way down the stark hallways to the medical wing. Dipper needed him. And he wasn’t going to leave him, not this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First thing's first: This story has reached over 1,000 hits and I am THRILLED about that! I am ecstatic to know that some of you actually enjoy this, even if it isn't the best (in fact I've realized that AT LEAST the first two chapters need to be completely rewritten but I'm way too lazy for that).
> 
> Second, the next chapter will be the end of the plot that I have planned. I have two different endings in mind, but I haven't been able to decide which one would work the best. I am not going to spoil the ending of this story, but I would like your opinion on which character you feel more sympathy towards, and I'm going to ask you twice: once now, and once after the next chapter to solidify results. 
> 
> For the record, I try my best to reply to EVERY comment I get. Even if it's just a thank you, it's to assure you that I am grateful for every second of interest you take towards this story. 
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are appreciated, and constructive criticism is encouraged! Thank you for reading!


	7. Recovery and Bed Time Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper wakes up, and Bill tells him some stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for chapter: mentions of suicide, suicide attempt, character death, car crash, medical instruments and machinery

Dipper Pines had died twice. Once, when he and Mabel were born, and again at the beginning of his senior year of high school, the event that landed him in his Great Uncle’s hospital - and many, many others before that. 

And now he had another incident to add to the list.

It took Dipper a long time to wake up. When he was fully conscious, he could remember small fragments - blurred, distorted, muffled fragments - of nurses tending to him in the recovery ward before his body had the strength to wake up fully. That’s where he was when he regained a sense of order again — the recovery ward. He had spent a good, long one and a half months practically _living_ in this exact bed the first time he came out of surgery. 

He was definitely not happy to be back.

  
Dipper blinked, his eyelids heavy, as he slumped his head to the side to get a look at his surroundings. His bed was propped up, setting him in an upright position just as he remembered waking up almost four months ago. A quiet _whirring_ that seemed to accompany the entire building and the heart monitor's constant beeping was the only noise. There was a side table next to his bed, grey table-top item-less, a light blue tiled floor just like the tiling in the cafeteria, and a stark-white privacy curtain that was pushed back, revealing two other white beds identical to his, both empty. 

He could hear the heart monitor beeping on his other side, and forced his head to turn a small bit in that direction. Behind the thin machine, he could see one window on the far wall; it was dark outside, but the moonlight still cast shadows on the floor in front of his bed. It was one of the only sources of light in the room, other than the small beam slipping in through the crack in his door back over to his right. Beside that, in the corner of the room, was a blue plastic cushioned chair. There was another in the other corner, Dipper knew, but didn’t have the strength to look.

He missed it, at first. His eyes were unadjusted to the darkness, blurred from sleeping for so long, and the shadows on the floor held his attention. He missed the person in the corner, sitting on that chair, head slumped and blonde hair covering a sleeping face, arms crossed limply over a thin chest. He started when he noticed the shoes, dark green complimenting the blue tiled floor, and followed the body up to another face. Dipper was much happier than he should have been upon seeing his roommate.

There was no clock in the room. Dipper’s only sense of time was the lack of light outside, and the quiet air of the rest of the hospital wing; he guessed it was late at night, maybe midnight. He coughed uncomfortably.

Dipper shifted in his bed, wincing at the pain in his chest. He gingerly touched one of the fluid tubes inserted in his chest, held securely by tape and wrapped in soft gauze. “Don’t pull it out, Dipper.” 

The brunette jumped and turned to the voice, soft and strict. Bill was leaning forward in his chair, reaching for Dipper’s hand and gently pulling it back down to the bed. His metal arm was cold now, but, he realized, so was Bill’s other hand. 

He remembered waking up after his first surgery strapped down. It was a precaution, because it was easy to get confused after the anesthesia and just not realize what was going on and end up pulling the tubes out. He couldn’t recall anything else - it had all gone by in such a blur. He wondered why he wasn’t restricted this time.

“I convinced them to take the cuffs off the first time you woke up. You seemed to understand what was going on.” Bill shrugged, and sat back down in his seat. “You looked uncomfortable.”

Dipper rolled his eyes, his hands twitching to cross over his chest, and he wanted to respond with yes, of _course_ he’s uncomfortable, he just had a surgery that could have _killed him_ , but the breathing tube down his throat prevented him from talking. He tapped the side of his neck a few times, and then pointed at the door, and then made a motion of pulling the tube out without touching it - he was extra careful to keep from pulling out the IV in his left arm, and from pulling the wires attached to his chest out from underneath of the gauze around his torso that were attached to the heart monitor. Bill looked between Dipper and the door, eyes narrowed as he tried to piece together what the younger male was insinuating. Dipper never was very good at charades. “You want me to go get the nurse?” Dipper nodded. He was surprised that there were no doctors or nurses in with him, but he guessed if he _had_ already woken up once then he assumed tests had already been run and he was deemed well enough to be taken off “around the clock” care. He still had a hard time believing it, though.

Bill pushed himself out of his chair and trekked across the room, quickly pulling the door open and stepping out of the way as two nurses - one male and one female - tumbled backwards into the room, along with a small wave of fluorescent lighting. They startled awake, pushing themselves up on their elbows to gather their surroundings. Bill nudged the lady (Dipper thought he remembered her name was Brandi) with his foot, and pointed at the brunette in the bed. “Dipper wants you.”

The fact that the nurses were _sleeping outside the door_ was enough to tell him that he was not, in fact, well enough to be without a doctor near by. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they were out there because of Bill. Bill could be scary sometimes. Irrational. And with Dipper hurt, he knew it would be worse.

At least, he hoped he would be. Is that a selfish thought? Dipper mentally slapped himself - mostly because he couldn’t find enough energy to physically smack himself upside the head.

Brandi was up in the blink of an eye once she realized Dipper was awake. She looked shocked, and it made him wonder how long he had really been out. She reached out towards the wall and slid her hand around before stopping on the light switch. “Watch your eyes,” she advised the males in the room, waited a second for Dipper to close his eyes and Bill and the other nurse to cover theirs with their hands, and then flipped the lights on. They buzzed, another addition to the never-ending white noise of the facility.

She quickly examined Dipper’s fluid tubes, and the gauze holding them in place, then went to record the readings on his heart monitor while the male nurse checked Dipper’s IV. 

“Oliver, could you grab my stethoscope off the table there? Thank you.” She sat on the edge of Dipper’s bed. Dipper could see Bill standing against the opposite wall with his arms crossed. He thought he saw a flash of something in his eyes - jealousy, maybe? Concern? - but Brandi brought his attention back to her before he could figure it out. “Dipper, do you think you can sit up for me?” He nodded.

Dipper grunted as he pushed himself up, and Brandi put her arm behind his back to help support him. He coughed around the tube in his throat again. 

She asked him a few questions - did he know where he was, did his chest hurt more than before his surgery, were his legs sore (they were) - and as she talked she slowly unwrapped Dipper’s torso. Her voice was soothing, her hands gentle, and Dipper could tell she was very experienced despite how young she looked. 

She didn’t remove the tape around the tubes, and for that, Dipper was grateful. It wasn’t that he was afraid of them shifting, or falling out, he just really did not like the idea of something coming _out_ of him. It was unnerving. The tape acted as a wall, between him and the plastic. He would probably pass out if it weren’t for that tape. 

Brandi checked his breathing with her stethoscope, wrote a few more notes down in his charts, then clicked her pen closed and slipped it and his chart into the slot at the end of the bed. Dipper tapped her knee - it was the closed part of her, and leaning forward hurt his chest - and when she turned, he rubbed at his throat. She smiled calmly at him. “We’ve been weening you off of the air tube since you woke up a few hours ago. Do you remember that?” Dipper shook his head. Brandi nodded in understanding. “That’s fine. Do you think you’re ready?” He nodded. “Okay, let’s get started then. Oliver, could you get a mask ready?” The breathing mask would be used to make sure he was breathing fine on his own. Dipper didn’t mind the mask. It was much more comfortable.

The process only took a few minutes, but the look of discomfort and pain on Dipper’s face made Bill cringe. His expressions, those Bill could deal with, but once Dipper started coughing around the tube as Brandi eased it up and out of his larynx, he had to swallow the rising bile in his own throat and step outside. He wasn’t sure how anyone could watch that, let alone be the one enduring it. 

Bill waited outside, leaning against the wall next to the door with his arms crossed and his right foot up by his left knee, until Brandi opened the door and ushered him back in with that soothing smile. When he saw Dipper, it was the first time he’d actually _looked_ at him since his surgery. He looked much more… _skeletal_ than he normally did, which alarmed him, because the kid had already been extremely thin. His skin was paler than usual, almost ghostly, and his eyes were ringed with dark circles. And the machinery made him look even worse.

Dipper had a breathing mask over his face, rubbing gently at his throat, and seemed to be adjusting to breathing normally fairly quickly. There was still two fluid tubes anchored in his chest with white tape, and electrodes covering the skin over his heart that were hooked up to the heart monitor. He looked like…well, like a machine. 

“So, how ya doin’ Pinetree?” Dipper rolled his eyes, but gave a thumbs up with his right hand, the arm that didn’t have an IV in it. His medical admittance bracelet hung loosely on his thin wrist. Bill could see a faint smile on his lips under the mask. He took his seat next to his bed again, and he figured he’d better break the news now, while the kid couldn’t talk. “Your sister called earlier.” Dipper’s smile faded, his eyes clouded with sadness. He continued. “I uh…I told her you were in surgery and she…umm, she told me she was coming. Here. To see you.”

Dipper’s eyes widened. “What?” He croaked out, then began coughing aggressively from the scratchiness of his throat. Bill cringed. “Bill, that’s, like, a ten hour drive, she can’t do that alone she’s only nineteen, what were you _thinking_ , telling her to come up here-”

“Woah, kid, slow down!” He held his hands up in front of him in defense, “I didn’t _tell_ her to come, she just started packing and I didn’t even know what she was thinking until she dropped the suitcase on her head—”

“She _what?”_

 _“—_ And then she told me to keep your phone because she didn’t have my number—”

“You have my _phone?”_

“—And then she hung up on me!”

Dipper shook his head, pulling at his hair with both hands, IV forgotten. “She can’t- she can’t drive _ten hours_ , Bill, what if she falls asleep, or someone hits her or she swerves off the road to save an animal?” His voice was hoarse. He knew he shouldn’t have been talking at all, but this was his _sister_. If she died…if she died, Dipper would have nothing left to live for. She was the only reason he had fought _so hard_. 

He felt someone grab his wrist gently, and looked up into Bill’s light brown eyes. He swallowed, suddenly grateful for the breathing mask he was still wearing. “Calm down, Pinetree.” His voice was quiet and low. It was very unlike him; but it soothed Dipper’s nerves. “Shooting Star called a few hours ago. After you woke up the first time. She told me she rented a cheap hotel room somewhere in Dunsmuir, and she’s going to drive up the rest of the way tomorrow. She’s okay, Dipper.” 

Slowly, Dipper relaxed back into the raised mattress, nodding, and Bill released his arm and sat back down. Dipper took a deep breath and rubbed his throat. 

They were silent for a while. Oliver had watched over Dipper to make sure he was breathing fine until Brandi came back in and, when there were no complications, she turned off the ventilator and took off the mask, wrote something in his chart, and then both nurses stepped out of the room and shut the door behind them. Dipper knew they didn’t actually leave, but it was nice to be with his roommate again. For a brief moment, he wondered how miserable he would have been if Bill hadn’t came down to visit him, but he shook the thoughts from his head. Mabel would be there tomorrow. That’s what mattered.

His attention was brought away from the tubes in his chest that he had been studying intensely when Bill sighed. Dipper turned to him expectantly, watching as he turned something over in his hands, again and again, as if he were trying to decide something. Then he held it out in an open palm, metal against metal. Dipper immediately recognized it as Bill’s pendant. The one that read: _“William Cipher. Class of 2015”._ “Ford gave it back to me earlier.” Dipper noticed he was looking at the charm as he talked instead of him. He looked troubled. Maybe, dare he even _think_ it, upset. “He told me you were still holding it when the went to prep you for surgery.” He chuckled, though his heart wasn’t in it. Dipper watched him closely.

“I was going to bring it to you. You know, before…” Dipper paused, “yeah. I thought, maybe, we could get something to fix it while we were down there.” 

Bill nodded, never once looking away from his hand, and huffed. “No need,” he said, holding up the necklace by its chain, “Sixer fixed it before he gave it back.” He watched the pendant twirl, suspended in the air, and then, finally, he looked at Dipper. “I…I think I want you to have it.”

Dipper’s mouth parted in surprise as he stared wide-eyed at his roommate. He shook his head. “No, I can’t take that from you, it’s important to you—“

“And that’s why I need you to look after it for me.” Bill cut him off, eyes pleading as he inched the necklace out toward the younger. “I obviously haven’t taken very good care of it, but if something happened to it I’d be really upset.” He met Dipper’s hazel eyes — those magnificent, _life-filled_ eyes that he thought he’d never see open again. “It’s like you. And I think it would be happier in your care.” 

He was going to reply with something witty, like _“objects don’t have feelings”_ or _“wow, you’re sappy”,_ but he was too focused on the _meaning_ behind his words. Maybe it was nothing, maybe he was overthinking things again, and he knew if he asked Bill would just avoid the question, but he thought that, just maybe, Bill had said that he would be upset if something ever happened to him. 

Hesitantly, he reached out and took the necklace. “Thank you. I promise I won’t let anything happen to it.” Bill seemed to relax as Dipper clasped the chain around his neck and rubbed the pendant resting perfectly in the hollow of his neck. 

The hum of the building took over, white noise filling their ears as they sat in comfortable silence. Brandi came back in about twenty minutes later to rewrap Dipper’s chest and check his fluid tubes and then left again. 

Mabel was sleeping soundly in her little hotel room four hours away.; Dipper couldn’t explain how he knew that, exactly, he just…did. He could feel it. Like a tug on the back of his head, trying to lull him to sleep, too. They were twins, after all. They were very close.

Dipper rubbed the necklace at his throat, over the words engraved on the back of the green spade. He wondered who _‘William’_ really was. 

And he decided to voice his thoughts.

“Hey, Bill?” The blonde hummed drowsily. He knew the kid had slept practically all day, but he himself was running on almost nothing but the four hours of sleep he had the night before, and with it now well past midnight, all he wanted to do was sleep. But he wouldn’t leave Dipper awake. “Who is William?”

He tensed and cracked an eye open to glance at the boy, then sat up and rubbed his face. “How do you know he’s not me?”

Dipper swallowed. This was sensitive territory, and he was all but diving right into it. “You told me never to call you that. So I assumed that wasn’t your name. Plus your initials are R.B.C., not R. _W._ C _..”_ Bill admired the kid’s detective skills, but it was not working out well for himself. He sighed and sat back. This was a long story.

He began without looking at Dipper directly. “William - Will - he was my brother.” Dipper nodded. He wasn’t _too_ surprised with this information. “We uh, we used to do everything together. Even through high school, we were always right there with each other. Nobody could get between us. We were the Cipher Duo; chaos and order all wrapped up in one.” Unconsciously, Dipper drew similarities between him and his sister and the Cipher siblings. Mabel and Bill were obviously both chaos masters; and Dipper, despite having a messy room, was a stickler for order and rules, much like, he guessed, William was.

“We decided to go to different colleges. He wanted to study literature — maybe to be a professor, or a teacher or something; he never really said — And I was going to study business. We were both going in-state, so we weren’t too torn up about it, but…”

“Wait,” Dipper interrupted, “One of you didn’t go to college before the other?” 

Bill looked at him with a blank expression, his head tilted slightly as if he didn’t understand why he would ask that. He acted as if the answer was common knowledge. “Of course not,” he replied, “We were twins.”

Dipper’s heart sank. All of the bitterness towards him and his sister, the phone calls he would either rudely interrupt to make Dipper spend time with him or ignore completely, every sour attitude —it was all because he was jealous. The Pines twins’ relationship must have reminded him of his own with his brother, before things went wrong. Dipper regretted ever getting angry at him for not participating in Mabel’s nightly calls. 

Bill continued, “We got each other a gift for graduation that year. Something to take to college with us so we wouldn’t feel _completely_ alone.” Bill paused, pulling his legs up underneath of him in the chair. “He got me a red bracelet with an eye on it that said _“Bill Cipher: Lord of Dreams”_ from some inside joke we had, and I got him that necklace.” Dipper’s hand subconsciously touched the charm at his neck.

“Did he like cards?” Dipper asked. It seemed like a logical question, with the shape of the pendant.

The blonde smiled fondly. “No, not at all. He hated playing cards. He was a terrible liar, never won a game in his life.” But as quickly as it came, the smile faded back into a frown. 

“He dyed his hair blue once,” he began again after a moment of silence, “in his _“rebellious”_ phase. Unlike you and Shooting Star,” he glanced at Dipper, “we were both males. Identical twins of the same sex. No one could ever tell us apart, not even by how we dressed.” A wicked smile graced his lips. “But that was probably because I convinced him to switch clothes with me once every week. No one ever knew who was going to wear what and which day.” He crossed his arms, a contemplating look on his face. “To be fair, though, Will’s hair _was_ two shades lighter than mine. Anyone could have looked closely enough if they wanted to.

“Anyway, I guess he’d just had enough of the confusion, and one day, when he was fourteen, he went out and bought a box of hair dye with his allowance money, and the next day he was blue.” He snickered. Dipper noticed his roommate’s hands had started shaking. He wished he could lean forward enough to hold them, just to make them stop. “Everyone liked it, so it just…stuck. No one got us confused after that.”

This was the last question he wanted to ask, but he felt like he needed to know. “So…” he shifted, wincing when he tried to pull his legs up under him, “what happened, between you two? You seemed so close before…”

Bill looked at him, but his eyes were blank. He wasn’t seeing him. Maybe he saw someone else, or he was remembering something, but the way he stared _right through him_ was terrifying. He had that look again, like it was a stupid question to ask. “He died.”

 For a moment, Dipper thought he was going to pass out. He swallowed, hard, as his roommate continued to stare through him. “Oh.” 

He tried to put himself in Bill’s shoes. He tried to imagine how he would react if Mabel died. He didn’t think he could live without her bubbly voice at least once a week. He didn’t think he would even try… 

His eyes widened. “Bill?” The blonde blinked, finally focusing on Dipper. “Are you left handed or right handed?”

Bill raised an eyebrow at him. “Left handed. Why?”

The brunette wrapped his arms around his stomach, staring down at the scratchy hospital blanket as he processed that information. He knew Bill was mildly masochistic (he’d tried to get Dipper to punch him or push him down. He liked the bruises. And then there was the carved zodiac on his prosthetic. He had told Dipper, once, that his fake arm had twice the amount of nerves than his other arm because it was new, and hadn’t had been exposed to the environment long enough from the nerves to be dulled. He said it had hurt like _hell_ , but it couldn’t kill him, and that made it perfect. He said it wasn’t too hard to cut through the mesh that held the nerves around the actual metal.). Dipper had always wondered why he needed a mechanical arm, but he always avoided the question. Now that Dipper knew his _twin brother_ had died…

“Bill, did you…” he swallowed, unable to meet his roommate’s stare, “did you try to kill yourself?”

Bill tensed, unconsciously cradling his right arm to his chest. When Dipper finally looked at him, his eyes looked glassy, like he was about to cry. He hadn’t noticed before, but his eyes were already a little puffy, like he’d been crying before Dipper woke up. “I—” the blonde started, but choked back a whimper. He took a deep breath and glanced around the room, anywhere but at Dipper, rubbing his arm to comfort himself. Dipper didn’t push him for an answer. He was quiet for a long time. But that was enough of an answer for Dipper.

Bill pulled his feet out of his chair, and scuffed them against the floor. He was too tall to swing his legs back and forth, but he did it anyway.

“William and I were both excited for college, but we knew that we wouldn’t see each other much. We were both on a high from graduating. It was what we had worked towards our entire life. We were both in the top ten. William was salutatorian. Everyone was so proud of him.” Dipper noticed that he wasn’t speaking on any set path. He seemed to be jumping all over the place, trying to get everything out at once. “We wanted that summer to be the best summer ever. Something we could always look back on. So, the week after we graduated, we decided to take a trip down to the Grand Canyon, just me and him and one of our friends. 

“I umm,” his voice cracked; he cleared his throat, “I was driving. Will was in the front seat with me as the DJ — he was a horrible DJ, never picked the same style of song twice — and our friend was sitting in the back seat with the snacks.” He grinned. “He always was a pig.” 

Bill took another deep breath, his eyes unfocused again. It was scary. Dipper was afraid he may never come back from his memories. “We were still in the mountains, hadn’t even made it out of Oregon yet. There was this…this big semi,” he scrunched his face up as he tried to remember, “coming down the road as we were going up. It was dark, and late. The driver must have been tired. He…he drifted over into our lane right as we were going to pass him and—” he rubbed his face and took a shaking breath, “I didn’t know what to do, Dipper. There were other cars behind him, I couldn’t go into his lane to get around him, and there was no room to pull off because there was a _cliff_ on Will’s side, but I couldn’t just let him hit us head on, he would’ve crushed us.” He bit back a sob.

“I…I swerved off the road. It was my first instinct. The- the guard rail…we were going too fast when I swerved. I umm…I flipped the car.” Dipper watched him swallow, rubbing his hands together. “We weren’t too far up the mountain yet, but it felt like it took forever to stop. The car was totaled. Jason was dead by the time we stopped because he wasn’t wearing his damn seat belt.” Dipper guessed Jason was their friend. He hadn’t said his name yet, but he was the only other person in the car. “William hit his head really hard, and had a few broken ribs, and there was a lot of glass. He had to go to the hospital. But I got by with a couple of bruises and a cut on my leg.” He seethed, like he thought he should have been the one that had died.

Dipper waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, he spoke up. “Is that how he died?”

His roommate shook his head sadly. “I wish. He was unconscious when the ambulance got there, but he made it to the hospital. He had to have one hundred and thirty-eight pieces of glass removed from his skin, and had to go through two different surgeries because he had internal bleeding and his ribs were about to puncture his heart.” He sighed. “But he lived.

“Later he had to have some dead cardiac muscle removed, and had a pacemaker implanted because he was having complications with arrhythmia. He had problems with his memory, but nothing was too bad. Neither of us went to college. My dad let me intern at his business for a while before he offered me a real job, and I made decent money. I spent it all on William; medical bills, medicine, I even got him gifts every month, whatever he wanted. He always chose the zoo.” Bill seemed content for a moment, remembering the bliss period.

“A couple years later, one day he just…collapsed. Your uncle was the only one that would help, and two weeks later, we ended up here.” Dipper nodded along. “Sixer trained me to take care of him, because he wouldn’t speak to anyone else. I was the only one at the time that didn’t need Vital Tech.”

Dipper hummed and moved to the edge of the bed, patting the empty spot next to him. He knew if he were reliving painful memories like this, he’d want some comfort. 

Bill immediately walked around to the side opposite Dipper’s IV and sat next to the brunette on his bed, their hips and shoulders touching. Dipper slipped his hand into Bill’s shaking one, and the blonde took a deep breath to calm himself. “He died three months later. My parents blamed me, and I blamed myself. I…I tried to—” he whimpered. Dipper hated seeing him so weak. He was always the strong one, always the one taking care of Dipper, always acting like there was nothing that could hurt him, but now…his entire facade had crumbled. Dipper squeezed his hand. “I cut my arm. From my wrist to my elbow. One of the counselors found me before I could bleed out, but my arm was too damaged. Ford amputated it, and gave me this,” he flexed his right hand, “but he couldn’t let me go home. I was too unstable, too dangerous for others. I didn’t want to go home, anyway.” He grumbled the last part.

“But if you were ‘dangerous’ then why did he put me in your room?”

Bill shrugged. “Guess he needed someone to watch you. And I knew how.”

The brunette shook his head. “That- that is something I still don’t understand. How did you already know how to take care of me?”

Bill turned to face him; neither of them realized they were still holding hands. “Pinetree, what did Ford tell you about your _Shockwave_?”

Dipper shrugged his shoulders. “Not much, really. Just the basics. A watered-down version of how it worked, what I had to do to make sure it worked right, and that he thought this was my best chance.” Bill nodded, silently cursing that Ford had kept such a big secret from him.

“Dipper, you aren’t the first one to try to use the _Shockwave.”_ Dipper raised an eyebrow. “William Cipher was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took FOREVER UGH but it's DONE even though it's a day late.  
> Thank you all so much for your comments! It always makes my day brighter when I see someone cared enough to take the time to write even a short "great job". It is really the best reward!  
> Okay, the finale is on its way (maybe two more chapters), and currently, I have many more votes of sympathy for Bill than Dipper. I can assure you, either way it won't change the ending too much, but it WILL make a difference.  
> Also I have a trashy tumbler filled with...well, a lot of stuff. Give me a follow if you feel like it! (rho-jaihtlyn)  
> As always, comments and kudos are appreciated, and constructive criticism is encouraged! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!


	8. A Beginning and an End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mabel arrives, and leaves, and a lot of stuff in between.

“So did you ever think about family? You know, like, starting your own after you got out of college or something?”

“Mmm,” Bill hummed, scraping the inside of his pudding cup to capture the last remaining taste, “no, I never really thought much about starting a family. I never actually went to college, so I was never separated from Will. No one else mattered if we were together, and I never had any romantic interest in anyone, so…no. No family for me.”

Mabel, who had safely arrived a week earlier, pouted around the plastic spoon in her mouth. Bill had loosely explained to her who Will was, but she didn’t know the whole story. She probably never would. “Boo.” She pointed her spoon at the blonde. “Everyone needs someone special in their lives, _including_ you.” She took an angry bite of her pudding.

Bill rolled his eyes and tossed his empty cup into the trash next to Mabel’s seat by the window, then crossed his arms and leaned back against the edge of Dipper’s bed, who was watching their change with an amused smirk. “Alright then, do _you_ have someone special?” He raised his eyebrows at her questioningly, one of his elbows resting next to Dipper’s thigh.

The girl’s eyes brightened at Bill’s inquiry (which wasn’t at all what he had expected. He had expected her to say no, and he would go on to tell her it was hypocritical of her to tell someone they needed a relationship when she herself wasn’t in one), and she jumped up from her chair, tugging her phone out of the pocket in her jeans (Dipper’s jeans. She’d run out of clothes the day before.). “As a matter of fact,” she hopped over to the two males, “I do!” Bill sat up in his chair to let Mabel situate herself between him and Dipper, and the puzzled looks she received from _both_ of them as she began scrolling through a photo album on her phone labeled _“Momos w/ ma SO”_ was absolutely _priceless_. “This was when she got blood in her hair, and _this_ was when I finally convinced her to let me take her out on a date — she was _completely_ over-dressed, but it was okay because she’s always over-dressed — and here we are drinking a milkshake together-”

“Hey, Mabel, this is great and all, but when, exactly, did you get a girlfriend?” Dipper frowned at his sister, who locked her phone and set it on her lap with a sheepish grin.

She rubbed the back of her neck, huffing a nervous laugh. “Weeeeell, you see, uh, umm,” she cleared her throat, “you remember when I called you that one time and I told you about my day and you told me about your same-old same-old _boring_ day?”

Dipper blinked. “Mabel, that’s literally _every_ day. You’re going to have to be more specific.” He crossed his arms over his chest, still bandaged but now tube-free, and waited.

Mabel hummed, sticking her tongue out as she stared at the opposite side of the room in thought for a moment, before she snapped her fingers and turned back to face him. “Oh! It was the day Bill tried to tickle you to death.” She stated, and Dipper had to think for a moment. Bill knew Dipper wasn’t a very handsy person, when had he ever- oh.

_Oh._

_“The day that Bill tried to tickle him to death”_ was not at all how he regarded that day. In fact, that tickling war (which he totally won, by the way, but don’t ask Bill) had almost completely slipped his mind. He remembered that day as-

“Oh!” Bill suddenly exclaimed, honey eyes sparkling as he sat up straight to see both twins’ faces, “You mean the day Dipper kissed me!”

Mabel’s jaw dropped, and for a moment the whole room was silent, save for the beeping of Dipper’s heart monitor.

And then she _screeched_.

Dipper yelped and covered his ears, and Bill’s eyes widened as he curled away from the female erupting next to him. “Dipper Pines, you did _what?!_ And you didn’t tell me?!”

Dipper sputtered, hands gesturing wildly as if that would somehow help him find a response. “I- I didn’t- okay but you said- I didn’t- it wasn’t-” he huffed, “you were dating someone and you didn’t tell me!” 

_“And that was almost a month ago!”_ Both twins proclaimed simultaneously; Mabel put more of an inflection at the end, as if she were asking a question. Bill blinked, looking between the both of them, and coughed awkwardly.

“I’m sorry, I was- was I not supposed to say anything about that?”

Dipper muttered a “no,” right as Mabel screamed “YES!” 

Mabel pulled both boys into a side hug, squeezing them tightly and muttering about how cute they were, and how she needed to get _all_ the pictures, and as long as she was invited to their wedding she could forgive Dipper for the wrong he had done her-

“Mabel, Mabel stop, we aren’t dating, it was just a kiss!” Dipper slipped himself out of her strangling embrace and stared at her, red-faced, definitely from lack of oxygen and _not_ embarrassment. “We were just talking about it, and you told me to do it, and then Common Sense Dipper stepped out of the room and Reckless Dipper took over and thought _what the hell?_ and then I kissed him but I didn’t _mean_ to, it just kind of happened.” Dipper, completely out of breath now, sat back on his knees in the center of the bed.

Both Bill and Mabel had shocked looks on their faces. Dipper didn’t know which was better to look at. He was still trying to decide which was the lesser evil when Bill spoke. “So…you think kissing me was a mistake?”

Dipper’s breath caught in his throat. Mabel, it was _definitely_ Mabel, but now he couldn’t look away from Bill, Bill and his beautiful honey eyes that seemed dull now, like they had been when he talked about Will the week before. Bill’s beautiful eyes that he sometimes wished he could stare at without him noticing because he could really stare at them _all day_ and never get tired of the sight, his beautiful eyes that were clouded with an emotion Bill definitely did not cope with well.

Bill’s beautiful eyes, filled with sadness.

Dipper shook his head violently, his hands out in front of him shaking back and forth as well. “No! No no no no, that’s not what I meant at all! That’s not it, I was just- I just wouldn’t normally do that, is all, it surprised me-”

“You mean if you had the chance, with no consequences whatsoever you wouldn’t kiss Bill right now?”

“No!”

“No?”

“NO?”

“No! That’s not what I meant! I was still- I mean, I would but-”

“But? Bro-bro, there should not be a _but_ on that statement.”

“Ugh!” Dipper threw his hands up and groaned, curling into himself with a self-deprecating groan of defeat. “This is why I don’t do relationships,” he muttered, more to himself than the others in the room.

He felt someone pat his shoulder. “Aw, Dip-dop, you’ll learn! Emotions are something you just gotta go with the flow, and you do not ‘go’ or ‘flow’ very well.” She paused, and Dipper, even not looking at her, could see her thoughtful face as she decided how to keep going, “But you’ll get the hang of it! You’re still young, ya know?”

Dipper scoffed into the bed sheets. “That exact thought is what got me into this mess. But, for the record,” he pushed himself to sit back against the head of the bed, where he was before, and turned to look at the blonde, who had been occupying the same chair for the past week and had rarely left Dipper’s side, “I don’t regret kissing you. I just…wish it had been under different circumstances.” 

He received a thoughtful hum in response, and Dipper was satisfied enough with that.

Mabel’s phone rang then, a cheesy romantic pop tune tainting the air of the room, and she hopped up off the bed to answer it and step out, but she didn’t miss the way Bill moved back over to rest his head on Dipper’s bed the moment she got up, or the unconscious smile that pulled Dipper’s lips back when Bill’s hand brushed the outside of his thigh over the covers.

When Mabel didn’t come back in immediately, Dipper let out a sigh and let his head fall back against the wall, his hand — now free of an IV — gently toying with strands of blonde hair. Bill hummed, content, and let his eyes fall closed. 

He hadn’t gotten much sleep since Dipper’s incident. Not that he got much before, but now he _felt_ exhausted. Physical exhaustion was one thing. His body tended not to feel tired until the third or fourth day with little sleep, and even then he could just sleep for six hours and be perfectly fine the next day. But mental exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, he hadn’t had much practice with all of that, and he felt so completely drained after a week of constant inner turmoil. 

Will had been one thing, and his mother and father before Will passed away, but Bill had never actually cared for another person before, not like he did with Dipper. Even friends or acquaintances were rare for him to make because he just wasn’t interested in their companionship. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to act around Dipper, but his mind constantly yelled _protect_ _protect protect,_ and the urge to wrap him up and never let him out of his sight again had become suffocatingly strong, but he _knew_ that Dipper hated feeling dependent on others. 

He had been doing his best to lock his impulses away in the back of his mind, but he still couldn’t leave Dipper for more than ten minutes without becoming hysterical and panicking. He’d given a couple guys some bruises and sent another to the emergency room for stitches the first time he’d been escorted back to his room for a shower and some proper rest, per Doctor Ford’s request.

Bill Cipher before Dipper Pines was a stone-cold bastard that did nothing for anyone’s benefit but his own.

Bill Cipher _after_ Dipper Pines was…still a bastard, but instead of being a bastard based on anger, he was a bastard acting out of fear. Fear was always stronger than anger.

“You need to sleep.” Bill startled, picking his head up to look at Dipper, who was staring down at him with a blank face. The blonde started to shake his head in protest, but Dipper’s hand over his made his breath hitch and his actions ceased. “I know you don’t sleep. Even before all of this you didn’t sleep, but it’s not healthy for you.” Bill sat up in his chair, but didn’t pull his hand away from Dipper’s. Dipper’s eyes found his, and they were so full of fondness and concern and Bill was _weak,_ weak to that look and he knew then that he’d do anything Dipper asked him to. “I know it’s hard for you. I know why you don’t sleep,” he didn’t, Bill had never told him, “but I’ve seen how strong you are, Bill. I know you can get better. We both can.” Dipper shifted his hand and tangled his fingers with Bills, “Together.” 

Bill barely managed to hold back a whimper. He squeezed Dipper’s hand back. “I-I…Dipper I don’t think I can- not-not now, not with everything…”

“Okay. Not right now. Tonight, so we don’t screw up your sleep schedule.” Bill wanted to protest, wanted to tell him that even if he tried he wouldn’t be able to get his body to rest, but the small smile Dipper was giving him, with his hand still wrapped around Bill’s fingers, Bill found himself nodding and muttering a hesitant _“okay”_. Dipper’s grin widened and he squeezed Bill’s hand again. “Good. I can talk to Ford, if you want me to. We can get you something that will let you sleep without dreaming.”

Bill stiffened. Dipper…wanted to put him on medication? After what he dealt with with his bipolar medication? He couldn’t believe Dipper wanted to put _drugs_ in him just to get him to sleep. He didn’t need to sleep, he needed to keep Dipper _safe_ , and he couldn’t do that when he was unconscious, Dipper _knew_ he hated taking medication when he didn’t need it, why would he even _suggest that_ -  “We don’t have to.” Dipper broke through his raging thoughts, gently pulling on his hand until Bill was sitting next to him on the bed and he could comfortably rest his head on the blonde’s shoulder. “It’s your decision, Bill. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” Dipper curled up to Bill’s side, his knees resting on top of Bill’s thigh and arms wrapped tightly around his right arm. “I just want you to get better.”

The blonde chuckled, leaning his head on top of Dipper’s. “You’re the one in the hospital, Pinetree, not me.” Dipper hummed, and Bill could tell from the sound alone that his eyes were closed.

“Yeah, but the only reason you’re not is because your pain isn’t on the outside.” Bill wrapped his free arm around Dipper and pulled him closer.

“Neither is yours,” he whispered into Dipper’s hair, and Dipper sighed. “Sleep now, Pinetree. Dr. Ford will be by soon.

And Dipper slept, curled into Bill, as Mabel silently clicked the door shut and turned to head towards Dipper and Bill’s dorm to get ready for bed, a fond smile on her lips.

 

 

 

 

Bill shook Dipper awake as Dr. Ford walked in forty minutes later, and then slipped back into the seat next to Dipper’s bed. Dipper immediately missed the warmth of the contact, but turned his attention to the older man standing with a chart at the end of his bed. “Hello, Dipper. How are you?”

Dipper rubbed his eyes and covered a yawn with his hand. “I’m okay.” He glanced around the room, growing darker by the minute as the sun set, and squinted. “Where’s Mabel?”

“She texted me about ten minutes ago and said she was going to bed,” Bill spoke, moving to rest his hand next to Dipper’s leg, “She said she saw you sleeping and didn’t want to wake you. She’s okay, she’s just upstairs.” Dipper, who had hung off of every word Bill had said, nodded, stared at him for another few seconds, then laced his fingers with the blonde’s and turned back to Ford.

“I’m okay,” he said again. 

Ford looked between the two boys for a moment, then huffed and turned back to his charts. He wrote down Dipper’s vitals from his heart monitor, checked that the pulse tracker strapped to Dipper’s right wrist held the same readings, then sat on the bed near Dipper’s feet and cleared his throat. “Dipper,” said brunette hummed, “have you had any discomfort? Any pain or complications breathing?”

Dipper shook his head. “No, I feel fine.”

With a nod he wrote down Dipper’s response, then moved to sit next to Dipper and pulled his stethoscope into his ears, listening to Dipper’s _Shockwave_ beat and instructing him to take long, deep breathes, then wrote that down, too. He stood after a few more questions that Dipper answered normally and nodded in satisfaction. “Your recovery truly is extraordinary, Dipper.”

Dipper nodded; Ford didn’t notice him squeeze Bill’s hand. “I haven’t been going through it alone.”

Bill’s eyes widened at Dipper’s words. Dipper…recovered because of him? And Mabel? Bill swallowed, searching Dipper’s face even thought he wasn’t looking at him. He was getting through this because he wasn’t alone. Bill studied their joined hands, glanced up at Dipper again and then to Ford. If Dipper was with him, maybe…maybe Bill could get better, too. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ford start towards the door.

Maybe with Dipper, Bill could learn to control himself. He could stop hurting people. He could sleep again without having nightmares. Maybe he’d learn to cope. Maybe he could finally find the strength to face his guilt.

Bill squeezed Dipper’s hand and stood. He could feel the younger’s eyes on him, studying him. but he didn’t turn to look at him. “Hey, Sixer.” Stanford turned back right as he began to step out the door and blinked at him. Bill shrunk under his gaze, his words stuck in his throat. Dipper tugged on his hand, and when Bill glanced at him he gave him the most encouraging smile. He took a deep breath, turned his gaze back to Stanford’s questioning eyes. “I-I want to try something. Something to- to help me sleep.”

For a long moment, Sixer didn’t move. Then, he smiled. “Of course, Bill. I’ll have Brandi bring something. Anything else?” Bill swallowed, squeezed Dipper’s hand, nodded slowly.

“I…I want to start my therapy again. Maybe try some different…different medication.” He watched as Stanford wrote something down on the back of Dipper’s charts, and then nodded. He said something about making room for him someday next week, but Bill wasn’t listening. He was looking at the beautiful smile on Dipper’s face, his bright eyes, the way he gently pulled Bill down next to him on the bed like he had earlier after Mabel had left. He wasn’t sure when Stanford had actually left the room, but when Dipper put his head on Bill’s chest and Bill finally got the chance to look back at the door, he was gone. 

Brandi came in a moment later with a pill bottle, dumped one pill into Bill’s hand, and then poured him a glass of water and handed it to him. Bill muttered a _“thank you”,_ and Brandi nodded to him. “It could take up to an hour for the medication to have any effect, but once it kicks in it should keep you asleep for at least eight hours.” Bill nodded. “I’ll be right back to change the sheets on the other bed for you to sleep on.” Bill nodded again, but he wasn’t sure he would actually use the other bed.

When Brandi stepped out of the room, Dipper wrapped his arms around Bill’s torso and placed his head where it had been on Bill’s chest as Bill wrapped his own arms around Dipper. It was a friendly position, one that satisfied Bill’s loud impulses to keep Dipper safe, and made Dipper feel, well, _safe._ They weren’t alone. “I’m proud of you, Bill.”

Bill hummed, resting his chin atop Dipper’s head. “That was one step one, Pinetree. I’ve got a long way to go yet.”

“I know. But you’re not doing it alone this time. You have me now. And- and Mabel.  
You have both of us.”

Bill pressed a kiss to the top of Dipper’s head, and okay, that didn’t come off as platonic as his head had told him it would, but he wanted Dipper to know how thankful he was to have him there. He wanted him to know how amazing it felt to not feel alone for once, that now, even after spending over three months with the kid, he finally felt like he could trust someone. 

Screw the platonic/romantic labels. He kissed Dipper’s head again. 

And again. And again.

He heard Dipper huff a laugh. “Bill, stop.” The way he clutched Bill tighter around his waist made it seem like that was the opposite of what he wanted.

“No.” Bill buried his nose in Dipper’s hair and kissed his head again, hugging him against his body and curling around him.

He pressed kiss after kiss to Dipper’s head, his eyes tightly shut, until he was shaking so bad all he could do was hold the younger boy. He didn’t realize he was crying until Dipper shifted in his arms and wiped the tears from his cheeks. 

“You don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.” Dipper studied his face, wiping away another tear as it fell down his face. 

Bill shook his head and took a deep, shaking breath. “No, I- I want to, I need to, I just…” he swallowed. He wouldn’t meet Dipper’s eyes.

“You’re scared.” Dipper stated, and Bill hesitantly nodded, turning his gaze from the floor to Dipper. “It’s okay. To be scared.” Dipper smiled. “I used to be scared all the time. But Mabel was always there for me. And now I’m going to be here for you.” 

Bill sobbed and pulled Dipper into his chest, and Dipper held him tight as he cried. It felt so _good_ to have someone there who understood, who was willing to put up with him and stay with him. It felt so nice to let everything out, even though he’d done more crying in the past week than he had since William had died, and before that, all the rest of his life added together. 

“We’re going to get through this. Together.” 

By the time Brandi came back in with a clean set of sheets and a blanket, Bill’s sobs had quieted and he had fallen asleep, still holding Dipper in his arms. Brandi informed a blushing Dipper that either she or Oliver would be in throughout the night to ensure Bill didn’t have any severe reaction to the new medication. She asked him if he wanted her to help him move Bill over to the other bed, but Dipper just shook his head. Bill was sleeping, _actually_ sleeping, for the first time since Dipper had known him, and he didn’t want to disturb him even for a moment.

Brandi wished him a goodnight and switched out the light when she left the room, and Dipper moved Bill to lie down on the bed so he wouldn’t wake up with a stiff neck the next morning. “Goodnight, Bill.” Dipper whispered, gently kissed his head, and lay down next to him.

 

 

 

 

Dipper had been awake for about an hour before Bill finally woke up. Brandi and Oliver had been in and out all night to check on Bill, and between them and the fact that a hospital bed was definitely not designed to sleep two grown men, Dipper hadn’t gotten much sleep. Bill didn’t seem to have a problem with it, though.

Bill sat up groggily and rubbed his eyes, and Dipper set his phone down he had been reading on and turned to face him. “Good morning, Bill. How did you sleep last night?” Bill merely groaned tiredly in response and flopped back down onto the pillow the two had shared last night. Dipper chuckled. “Mabel went to get us breakfast. She should be back soon.” Bill hummed, and Dipper brushed his fingers through blonde hair, tugging on a few greasy tangles. “You need a shower, Bill.” The blonde huffed and buried his head in Dipper’s chest, making Dipper laugh and push him off the bed.

“Dipperrrrrr,” Bill whined, and tried to pull himself back up onto the bed with the blanket, but ended up pulling it off the bed and onto the floor with him. Bill did the logical thing: burrito-ed himself in the fabric, curled up on the floor, and went back to sleep. 

Dipper chuckled and leaned over the side of the bed. “Bill, get up.” The older male groaned and burrowed down into his cocoon. “Biiilllll,” Dipper tapped the top of his head - the only part of him he could reach, “get up, Mabel will be back soon, and we have therapy at ten.” 

Attention caught, Bill sat up; Dipper’s hand fell off of his head. “Therapy?”

Dipper nodded. “Ford came in this morning and said he scheduled you with a new psychiatrist for today. It’s just to see if you two can get along, for now. I know you don’t take kindly to strange people poking you with a stick.” Bill scoffed and rolled his eyes, but at the gentle touch to the top of his head he turned to look at Dipper, who was watching him with concern. “You will try, won’t you? To get along with them?” 

Bill blinked. Did Dipper think he was going to back out of what he had said yesterday? He _had_ cried last night, and told him he was afraid…yeah, Dipper probably thought he was going to back out. He nodded. “I’ll try my best,” he smirked, “but not everyone can handle my God-like demeanor.”

Dipper rolled his eyes so hard he fell back on the bed. “You are an arrogant asshole, Bill Cipher.”

Bill laughed and stood up, then flopped horizontally over his roommate. “Aw, come on Dip, you know you love me.” Dipper hummed negatively, squirming to free his arms from Bill’s weight. “Admit it, Pinetree, you’ll miss this if you leave.”

Despite the heavy subject (that they had either been avoiding or were just too oblivious to come to the conclusion that, yes, eventually one of them would be leaving the other), Dipper chuckled, flicking the back of his head once he got his hands out from under Bill’s torso. “Yeah, yeah, now go take a shower before Mabel gets back and I eat your breakfast.”

The blonde sat up with a gasp and a mechanical arm over his heart. “You wouldn’t.” Dipper smirked.

“Do you wanna test it?” Bill narrowed his eyes at Dipper and stared at him for a moment, and Dipper stared right back, smirk still in place. 

With a huff, Bill pushed himself off of the bed (and Dipper) and picked up the clothes Mabel had brought down for him sitting next to Dipper’s on the other bed, mumbling something about _“evil in an angel’s body”_ and _“better not eat my fucking breakfast.”_ Dipper chuckled and shook his head, picking his phone back up and moving to sit back against the head of the bed.

 

 

 

 

Three weeks later, Bill and Dipper were comfortably back in their dorm in the residential wing. Mabel had gone home the week before so Dipper didn’t have to share a bed with anyone (except he had shared a bed with Bill back in his hospital room almost every night so it wouldn’t have been new for them). Dipper was back to the same physical stand point he had been before his _Shockwave_ malfunctioned, and Bill had made significant progress with his psychiatrist over the past few weeks. He still relied on medicine to get a proper rest after a particularly bad day, but he was doing better. 

Better, not great.

“Dipper?” The blonde shook Dipper’s shoulder gentle to try and wake him. It was just past three thirty in the morning. He knew Dipper wouldn’t be a happy camper being up so early, but he had offered that if Bill ever needed him he could come to him, no matter what.

Granted, that was two weeks ago, he may think that Bill should be able to work through his problems on his own now, and he’ll probably be really mad at Bill for waking him up instead of just dealing with it like the adult he was supposed to be, take responsibility for himself, not depend on others. He should really just go back to bed and not bother him-

_No._  

Bill shook his head to clear the negativity. Dipper had said no matter what. And right now, he needed him.

He shook his shoulder again. “Dipper?” The brunette hummed, hazel eyes blinking to focus in the darkness.

“Bill?” Bill swallowed and moved back as Dipper sat up. “Hey, what’s up? Are you okay?” Dipper moved over to make room for the blonde, and he scooted under the mound of covers next to him.

“Umm,” Bill’s voice cracked on the syllable; he swallowed again, “I just- I had- I just needed to know you were okay.” 

In the darkness, he saw Dipper nod his head as he took both of his hands in his. Bill hadn’t realized how badly he was shaking until Dipper’s fingers curled around his. “I’m okay, Bill. You’ve been watching me. I’m okay thanks to you.” 

Dipper had met with Bill’s psychiatrist once, about two weeks after their sessions started, and had given him some tips to help calm Bill down when he was having an episode (which he had only had to use once so far), and, after she had let Bill explain his nightmares to Dipper, had given him points to bring up to stop the self-deprecating thoughts he had when he woke up in the middle of the night. Saving Dipper was one of them.

Bill nodded. “Okay.” They were quiet for a moment. Bill’s head fell to rest on Dipper’s shoulder. “Can I talk?”

Dipper nodded. “Of course. You don’t have to ask. I’m here to listen.”

There was another bout of silence before Bill began. “One second Will was okay, a-and then he was on the floor and I couldn’t move. I tried to help him but- I couldn’t move, Dipper. I just…watched. I watched him die, Dipper.” Dipper wrapped his arms around him and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “It was a memory. That day, I…Stanford had told me how to use the defibrillator, but I never thought I would actually need to use it. I was so shocked. I couldn’t move, and he was just- lying there, on the ground. I let him die, Dipper. I let him die.”

Dipper shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You couldn’t save him, Bill. His _Shockwave_ was broken, you couldn’t have helped him. It’s not your fault, Bill.”

“He told me he hates me. He hates me for letting him die.”

“Will loved you, Bill. He loved you. It was just a dream, he would never say that. He loved you.”

Bill had started crying again; Dipper wiped some of the tears from his face. “Then- then it was you. You were on the ground where Will was, and I couldn’t move I couldn’t-” Bill sobbed, and Dipper hugged him to his chest.

“It was just a dream. You saved me, Bill. You got to me in time. It’s okay, I’m okay. I’m okay.” Dipper continued to mutter reassurances to the blonde as he finished crying. They both fell asleep, tangled in each other. 

Bill didn’t have another nightmare that night.

 

 

 

 

“Dipper!” Bill exclaimed, running down the hall waving a paper in his left hand and an ear-splitting grin set on his face. 

Dipper chuckled as the older male tackled him in an enthusiastic hug. “What’s got you so happy?” Bill jumped out of his arms and shoved the paper into Dipper’s face, far too close to actually be read. Dipper leaned away to try to capture the words.

“Dr. Goodwin cleared my psych!” He shook the paper frantically, “I can leave whenever I want to now!” Dipper’s eyes lit up with the news, and he grabbed Bill’s face in both hands and kissed him hard on the mouth before wrapping his arms around him and pulling him in for a hug.

“That’s amazing, Bill! I’m so proud of you!” 

The two males hadn’t ever discussed a name for the relationship they had. It was more than platonic, obviously, with kisses and cuddling and hand-holding, but neither of them had ever used the word ‘boyfriend’ or had asked the other out on a date. Dipper wasn’t sure what they were, but as long as they were together he didn’t really care wheat they called it.

Bill nodded vigorously and clutched the paper to his chest. “I mean, I don’t have anywhere to go right now, but just knowing that I’m not stuck here makes this place seem like a whole different world now.” 

Dipper hummed in thought. “Well, you know Mabel and I bought an apartment to share when Ford clears me next week. There’s a guest room.” Bill’s smile grew even wider. “I mean, obviously I’ll have to talk to Mabel, but I doubt she’d object to another person helping us pay the rent.” Bill wrapped Dipper in another hug as he finished his sentence. “So, is that a yes, or…”

Bill slapped Dipper’s shoulder a bit harder than necessary. “ _Yes,_ that’s a yes, you idiot!” They both laughed, shared another hug, and began to walk towards the cafeteria hand in hand. 

The _JoltSurge_ Dipper had had now been in stable condition for three months, with no signs of deterioration or complications. He had gotten it just a few weeks after he had recovered from his second _Shockwave_ implant, and with it now well into September, Dipper, along with Dr. Ford, thought that the results were so overwhelmingly positive that he had no reason to keep the boy there. Mabel had started her second year of college already, so they would be waiting for her fall break so she could drive down and help them move their stuff in. Dipper was excited to see her again, and even more excited to start living life normally again. With Bill.

_With Bill_. It seemed strange, to think of Bill outside of the facility, but it was a welcome strange that Dipper was eager to transform into a normal thought, into a time where thinking about him _inside_ the facility was strange.

Next week. Dipper would be moving in with his two favorite people next week.

 

 

 

 

“Okay, Bro-bro, you’ve got all your clothes and your shoes and your jewelry-”

“It’s just the one necklace, Mabel, and I’m never _not_ wearing it.”

“And Bill, you have everything too?” She continued as if Dipper hadn’t spoken.

The blonde gave them a thumbs-up. “Yes indeedy, Shooting Star.” 

“Great!” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s get a move on, then! Go! Go, go, go!” Dipper chuckled at his sister’s enthusiasm and slid into the front seat of Mabel’s truck, Bill hopping in right next to him, and Mabel taking her seat in front of the steering wheel. She turned the keys, and the truck roared to life, radio breaking through the silence. “Oh, I love this song!” She turned up the volume and began singing alone with the upbeat pop tune coming through the speakers, making Dipper cover his ears. Bill obnoxiously sang along, right in Dipper’s ear.

“I hate you both,” the male brunette stated, earning equally disapproving sounds from the other two passengers in the car. 

“You love us, Dip-dop, admit it.”

Dipper huffed. “Yeah, yeah, I love you Mabes.”

Bill gasped. “What about me, Pinetree, don’t you love me?” Dipper rolled his eyes fondly, but didn’t respond. “Dipperrrr, come on! You love me, right?” He wrapped Dipper in a hug and whined as the brunette tried to push him away. “Don’t reject me, Pinetree I love you!” Dipper, desperately trying to hide his laughter, leaned over onto Mabel, still fending off Bill’s affectionate nuzzling.

“You’re both ridiculous and I hate you.”

Bill slumped on top of Dipper in defeat. “I am dead. Put it on my tombstone: Here lies Bill Cipher, killed by Dipper Pines’ rejection of my affections.” Dipper scoffed, rolled his eyes. 

“Aww, Dipper, kiss your boyfriend, make him feel better.” The male twin huffed. “Look how sad he is, lying dead in your lap, don’t you want him to be happy?” 

With another eye roll, Dipper bent down and kissed Bill’s forehead. “There, better?” 

Bill reanimated in his seat with a grin. “Better.” Mabel squealed in delight from the driver’s seat.

“You guys are so adorable! I’m going to take so many pictures of you two, just always be ready, because you never know when- _shit!_ ” Mabel cursed, pulled on the steering wheel and narrowly missing a driving on-coming in their lane, then battled with the road to regain control.

Dipper’s artificial heart jumped out of his chest, Bill’s arms pulled him tightly to his side, Mabel screamed, and then-

And then Dipper was waking up, lying in the grass next to the road. He could faintly hear sirens in the distance. _“-per? Ca…ear m…Dipper?_ Dipper? Hey, Pinetree, come on, can you hear me?” Bill’s face was tear-stained as he held Dipper’s head in his lap. Dipper managed a hum in response.

“Bill?"

He looked like he was going to burst into tears again at the sound of Dipper’s voice. “Oh, thank god. I thought- I thought you were going to be taken away from me, too. I’m so happy you’re okay.” He pressed light kisses over Dipper’s face. He could feel bruises already forming on his body, and he couldn’t move his left leg without flinching. He couldn’t see much other than Bill, by the way he was leaning over him, and he couldn’t hear anything other than the wind rustling the trees — or maybe that was the truck. Dipper knew they had crashed after some idiot had driven into their lane and made Mabel swerve around him.

Mabel. That’s what he was missing. Where was- “Mabel.” he forced out, his voice still not quite functional. “Where’s Mabel?” 

Bill’s expression dropped, and this time, he did start crying. “I’m sorry, Dipper. By the time I came to, it was too late. I pulled you out of the truck first, but when I went back for her, she…Dipper, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t save her. She was- she was already dead.”

For a moment, Dipper was sure he had heard him wrong. Mabel couldn’t be dead, she wouldn’t leave him like that-

But the tears already running down his face were enough to convince him. 

Mabel Pines, his twin, his sister, his _everything_ for nineteen years, was dead. 

When the ambulance came, Dipper and Bill were taken to the hospital to have their injuries treated. Mabel didn’t ride in the back with them. She didn’t pop her head in and make a joke at how fragile Dipper’s bones were when they told him his left leg was fractured. She didn’t slap Bill upside the head when Dipper heard him muttering that it was his fault. 

For a while, he could believe that he was back at the facility, and that Mabel was waiting for him back in California. 

She wasn’t waiting for him. Dipper and Bill were alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *finger guns* Ayyyy looks who's back. Sorry 'bout all of...that. *whispers* I'm not sorry
> 
> ANYWAY, this is over a month late. Yes, I see that. I am sorry, but I started my freshman year of college at the beginning of August and everything kind of got out of hand and I ended up super stressed out, PLUS I ended up having writer's block for this chap when I DID find chances to write (it's two in the morning and I have a nine am class tomorrow whoop), so, I apologize for the long wait and I hope that even with the major angst you enjoyed. There's one more chapter to go, which SHOULD go up on schedule but who knows.
> 
> Also, my biology professor's name is Dr. Ford. How ironic is THAT??

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy reading it and stick with me (drama WILL go down...eventually). I'm not sure how long it'll end up being. Probably not more than 15 chapters or so, but who knows! I always tend to write more than I originally plan. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated and constructive criticism is encouraged! I want this to be worthwhile, so everything helps!


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